Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy

photograph of a round cake covered in chocolate crunchies with ice cream cone horns, eyes, a wide pink smile, little arms and a belly indicating a friendly little monster guy

photograph of the actual cake through a carvel box, the guy looks fuuuuucked upppppp. he looks surprised and disgusted

it's my daughter's birthday and I ordered her a monster cake from Carvel and this is the picture on the website and this is the picture of it in real life. please note: this is not a complaint. if this had been the picture on the website i would have paid more

I am thrilled to announce that I just opened my lab at New York University in @nyucns.bsky.social and Biology! Our work will explore the richness of animal behavior, dissecting the genetic and circuit mechanisms that shape its evolution.

Yes! We are always looking for observations from zombie hunters. Do reach out!

Our podcast is out! Check out our research @urochester.bsky.social that is decoding how true biohackers called twisted-winged insects control social wasps! #teamwasp #strepsiptera #zombiewasps 🐝🧟‍♀️ Please check out this fantastic initiative by @bugsneedheroes.bsky.social. Thank you for having me!

Strepsiptera systematics: past, present, and future Abstract. The twisted-wing parasites (Strepsiptera Kirby) are among the most obscure and enigmatic orders in the Insecta. Strepsipterans are endoparasites

Our big review paper on strepsipteran systematics for Insect Systematics and Diversity is out! Hoping it's a helpful resource for anyone who needs it.

5/ Some wings have evolved strategies to help reduce damage resulting from collisions. For example, we learned a few years ago that wasp wings have a flexible joint that acts like a reversible crumple zone, allowing the wing tip to easily bend out of the way when it hits things...

ggplot2 4.0.0 A new major version of ggplot2 has been released on CRAN. Find out what is new here.

I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN.

It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package.

Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats

Flyer How to apply to the NSF-GRFP (in 7 weeks!). Check out our comprehensive guide and timeline for applying to the NSF-GRFP (or any fellowship!) on a deadline. Give it a shot — it’s not too late! Resource by Olivia Goldman, PhD and John Lê. Photos of authors. Cientifico Latino, Inc. logo. Link: cientificolatino.com/apply-in-7-weeks

Applying to the NSF-GRFP (or another fellowship) on a tight deadline?

We built a 7-week guide + timeline to get you from draft to submission. It’s not too late — you’ve got this! ✨

🔗 cientificolatino.com/apply-in-7-weeks

#NSFGRFP #GradSchool #Fellowship

Nesting behaviour drives the evolution of heat tolerance and climate vulnerability in bees! Check out our pre-print on 95 species of Australian native bee across the latitudinal extent of Australia! 🐝 #nativebee #climateadaptation #heattolerance #plasticity #behaviour #bees #climatechange

📣📣Interested in writing a proposal to explore coevolution and/or mechanisms underlying parasitic manipulation? Check out our team’s current projects and emerging host-parasite system. If these align with your interests , please check eligibility per NSF guidelines and email me! #GRFP #zombiewasps

A large fly hanging from a leaf by its two front legs, holding a tiger-striped prey fly in its middle/hind legs. iNaturalist Photo 10502457, (c) Mikael Behrens, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/10502457?size=large

"Why is it called a hanging thief?" www.inaturalist.org/photos/10502...

🌟Looking for a PhD? 🌟 check out this exciting opportunity in integrative biology with an amazing PI! 👇🏽👇🏽

Fellow entomologists! This team is interested in getting to know your research. Reach out to them!

Check out the fantastic podcast series run by @bugsneedheroes.bsky.social! In each episode, Amanda (artist) and Kelly (entomologist) discuss amazing insects, with researchers as guests. Amanda also designs an illustration based on each convo!
🐝🐜🦋🪰🦟🪲🕷️

Our false head work is out! By analysing ~1000 #butterflies, we found many traits at posterior end of hindwings evolved correlatedly, likely forming a trait complex w/adaptive function to dupe predators into thinking these traits together are actual head!!

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

#ABL2025 Plenary Spotlight: Dr Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy ⭐

Join us on Nov 13-14 to learn how @avispatica.bsky.social Dr Mora-Kepfer Uy’s team uncovered captivating ways in which parasites reprogram the behaviour and lifespan of insects. 🐝🪱

Learn more about the conference: ablaoc25.sciencesconf.org

Wasps on BBC Breakfast 🐝
Our expert joined BBC Breakfast to talk all things wasps - why they're essential, misunderstood, and worth celebrating.

Discover the Grant Museum’s fascinating new exhibition on wasp diversity.
🔗 www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-coll...

#UCL #GrantMuseum #BBCBreakfast #Wasps

Electroreception in treehoppers: How extreme morphologies can increase electrical sensitivity | PNAS The link between form and function of an organism’s morphology is usually apparent or intuitive. However, some clades of organisms show remarkable ...

Why do treehoppers look so weird?! Our latest paper, out this week in @pnas.org, suggests a perhaps unexpected reason - static electricity ⚡ We show that treehoppers can detect the electrostatic cues of predators and that their crazy shapes may boost their electrosensitivity! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Starship giant transposons dominate plastic genomic regions in a fungal plant pathogen and drive virulence evolution Nature Communications - Giant transposons, known as ‘Starships’, mediate horizontal gene transfer between fungal genomes. Here, Sato et al. show that Starships occupy genome regions...

📣 Happy to see the journal publication 📄 of our work on Starships 🚀 in Verticillium fungi: terrific work led by @yukiyosato.bsky.social
rdcu.be/exBSp

Honored to be a plenary speaker for #ABL2025! #wasplove

Not to mention that our people are paid very little to farm cacao

Scientists In Texas Found A New Species Hiding Under Their Noses - Sciencing Scientists at Rice University in Texas discovered a new parasitic wasp species, Chrysonotomyia susbelli, parasitizing the galls of local gall wasps.

Article on #NewSpecies of parasitoid wasp we discovered last year on #RiceUniversity campus! Great work led by @brendanoloughlin.bsky.social in collaboration with Mike Gates, Pedro Brandão, & me.

www.sciencing.com/1905663/texa...

When darkness falls some wasps don't return to a nest to sleep, they simply latch onto some foliage for the night. Here a thread-waisted wasp (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae: Ammophila pictipennis) has settled in on a common ragweed (Asteraceae: Ambrosia artemisiifolia). Blissfield Michigan, 18 Sep 2010.

When darkness falls some wasps don't return to a nest to sleep, they simply latch onto some foliage for the night. Here a thread-waisted wasp (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae: Ammophila pictipennis) has settled in on a common ragweed (Asteraceae: Ambrosia artemisiifolia). Blissfield Michigan, 18 Sep 2010.

Wasp colony with a picture of Alicent Hightower.

Wasp colony with a picture of King Geoffrey

Wasp colony with a picture of Ramsay Bolton

I’m back from a work trip and it’s my turn to do colony check-ins. I asked for which colonies to 👀 for potentially killing brood… and I get this protocol 🤣🤣 #teamwasp #ProudPI

A tiny dark orange wasp with shaded fringed wings on long stalks, head and antennae are to the left of pictures

A beautiful female Mymar pulchellum parasitoid wasp of the Mymaridae found in Brede High Woods. This may be a common species but it is always worth a closer look!

#UKWildlife #wasps #Mymaridae #HighWeald

Team wasp PI holding a Polistes fuscatus

Team wasp in our wasp rearing room with experimental colonies

Team wasps in the field!

Team wasp collecting in the field

After >20 years of working with wasps, I like them even more now!

And a ⭐️ team that’s rocking this season and experimental infections with twisted wing parasites! #wasplove #strepsiptera #fieldseason #ProudPI #teamwasp

Instar 2 larva of Xenos peckii, a parasitic insect from the order Strepsiptera. This larvae infects and manipulates a social wasp, Polistes fuscatus.

Working with parasites blows my mind! As in an alien movie, here is an instar 2 larva of Xenos peckii. Amazing dissection from star student Natasha Vacca, as it’s the size of a spec of dust! It infects and manipulates Polistes fuscatus, the social wasps we study. #Strepsiptera #zombies #wasplove

Congrats to Amanda who truly reflects excellence while being an incredibly kind and giving human being!

Envelope addressed to Mr. And Dr. Uy for the first time! We’re both academics

Well, this is a first! And much appreciated!

It’s usually Dr. and Mrs. Uy, even though we’re both academics 🥴

‘This is bull——”: National Science Foundation employees protest HUD's takeover Dozens of National Science Foundation employees crowded the agency’s headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, Wednesday to protest the news that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, w...

Another day testing the limits of resilience.

The Alexandria NSF building was designed for the NSF merit review process (gold standard), complete with a floor devoted to panels.

Now we aren’t allowed to have in person panels.

The loss of US science leadership will haunt this country for decades.