Arthropod Abbey (Abigail Hayes)

photos from an excellent study by Cohen et al (2021) of a cerambycid beetle just straight up doing it with the flower of Disa forficaria, in a classic example of a ~sexual mimicry pollination system~

the humiliation of going on a hot date then finding out she wasn't even in the same PHYLUM (then someone writes a whole paper about it, with photos of your wiener)

Everyone go buy cricket art, 🦗I recently bought a piece from this artist and cannot recommend enough!

H.A. Brown Elementary School Mural By Skype a Scientist

Had our first group meeting yesterday with the H.A. Brown Principal & Nick (the artist!)

The school is psyched. I'm going to talk about pollinators next week, & have the kids vote on their favorite bug!

We have a wall!
We have a plan!
We just need a little more funding 😅
givebutter.com/KenzoMural

Being In an interdisciplinary field, it is easy to feel dumb because you are a "jack of all trades, master of none"

But that feel is greatly improved when you learn this sentence is often misquoted. The full version is:

"jack of all trades, master of none, but often better than a master of one"🎃

Butts!

I don't have unlimited budget so it's taking a while to expand this collection, but if you're interested in being part of it, DM me! Mutuals prioritized.

Stubby nugget of a shiny blue metallic wasp, little flappy antennae. Looks like she could curl up into a perfect blue golf ball

Bright blue shiny face of the creature, with perfect tiny toothed mandibles

*clack-clack of tiny teef*

PERILAMPUS 😍 I hadn't seen one of these stunning blue nuggets in like 3+ years. Perfect, perfect creature. 💙
(they're hyperparasitoids of hyperparasitoids, and so damn cool enough on that merit, but also they can look like this)

a 4 by 4 grid of insects that has a metallic grreen tiger beetle, a teal and black speckled sharpshooter with a yellow underbelly, a reddish brown stag beetle, and handsome meadow katydid, with the following words superimposed "Call for mural walls! we're making 3 10x10ft murals about philly's bugs. submit your walls at bit.ly/bugwalls

Hey Philly!

I need your help finding 3 walls for 10x10ft murals this fall all about the most charismatic bugs in the city.

Each mural must be in a different neighborhood, so we have to cast this net as wide as possible.

Please help us spread the word!

Submit your wall at bit.ly/bugwalls

An elegant little camel cricket, posed dramatically in the kitchen sink

Greeting committee at the field station cabin

this is so stupid i'm laughing

Brother Bostrichid was known far and wide for his expertly crafted wooden furniture. unfortunately he also had a bad habit of eating it.

We also looked at stomata on leaves by painting the leaf with clear nail polish and then peeling it off and mounting it on a slide, check out the two different plants my students prepped

What we bug lovers can do in the Year of the Horse? To admire the humble camel cricket! Known as Zao Ma in Chinese, which means “kitchen horse”, it is the mount of the Kitchen God Zao Jun, and brings good fortune & indicates plenty of food on the plates.

The lack of fight has been pretty
... disgusting. So thankful to all of my colleagues out there that are still fighting the goof fight even if we haven't been able to use *those words* to describe what we are working toward

stylized, simple drawing of a horseshoe crab colored in yellow, green, and blue, with the name Tachypleus gigas in the corner

We're horseposting post your horses.

Celery stalks sitting in a cup of red water

A celery stick sliced open, revealing the vascular bundles (specifically the xylem) are dyed red

A microscope slide made from the celery revealing the vascular system in which the xylem is dyed red and the phloem is directly above in a white, C-shaped structure

This week in my intro bio course we looked at plant vascular systems and other transport structures - check out each photo's alt text for a description of what is going on with this celery! 🔬

I definitely compared the vascular bundles to Toad (from Mario) 🍄

All forms of Beetle are valid forms of Beetle, including this

Having a rough day and this genuinely and me chuckling pretty hard

A sign advertising fat Tuesday pancakes and a lion dance around town

The community college I adjunct at is always doing the cutest community events - wish I had some extra time for Fat Tuesday Pancakes today! 🥞

If B+B paper curio have caught your eye, whether you're a longtime friend or a new follower after the Oddities and Curiosities Expo in Charlotte, NC, over the weekend, why not start your own handmade collection!

www.beastieandbone.com/gift-shop/do...

#curio #paperart #sciart #papercraft #moth

colored pencil and watercolor bug drawings

More #febugary2026 catch up

Will always repost tingids- I tried to do evo-devo work with Azalea lace bugs in my last lab but they are really hard to do genomic work with 😭 whomever eventually gets them up and running as a model system is gonna do some really rad stuff 🥰

How specific are heritable symbioses?

And what can we learn from swapping obligate symbionts across host species?

We address this in our latest, led by @inespons.bsky.social & in our collaboration w/ @microbiome.bsky.social 🦠🪲 Out today in @natcomms.nature.com!

1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Elizabeth Jockusch and the slender California salamander (Batrachoseps sp)

An amber rhinoceros beetle mug

An emerald green monstera leaf mug

An emerald green Luna moth mug

An amber stegosaurus mug

Anticipating some new sprig mugs being done around the end of February! Excited for a new batch it feels like it’s been a while since I’ve had some finished. #sciart #bugsky

Pareidolia

A photograph of a hard-bodied mite, covered in long, spiky bristles.

"We have such mites to show you"

Today is the last day to vote in the 2026 Bug of the Year contest!

Vote now for the Hellraiser Mite: bugoftheyear.ento.org.nz/vote-here-20...

P.S. There is also a giant earthworm worthy of your love (you get 3 votes) 🪱

#BugOfTheYear #BugOfTheYear2026 🧪

Oh, what a lad!

Here is her google scholar page: scholar.google.com/citations?us...

Also my buddy Dowen did her PhD in vibrational communication at WSU with me, happy to connect you two