iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

On my way to Portland for #EntSoc25 ✈️ ! Excited to catch up with old colleagues, make new connections, share my research, and discuss outreach strategies. I will be presenting preliminary data from my PhD thesis chapter on bumble bee behavior under pesticide exposure and thermal stress 🐝🌡️

Presentation on "Pollinators in a pickle: Bumble bee behavior and resilience to thermal stress under pesticide exposure". Monday, Nov 10, 9:12-9:24 am (PT) in D136, OCC. (In Grad 10-min Competition: P-IE, Bumble Bees). Presented by Anupreksha Jain from UW-Madison.

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Thrilled to have made it to Kolkata for #Behaviour2025! It’s a full circle moment for me as my interest and career in biological research started right here at a KVPY camp I attended just about a decade ago. And grateful for the nicest conference swag! 🐅

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Beautiful documentary covering research from all over the US on bee declines and conservation. Our work on the combined effects of pesticides and extreme weather on bumble bees is featured at ~45:45. Incredibly cool filmmaking by @neillosin.bsky.social and team! 🐝🥵📹🧪

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SICB journals @sicbjournals.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

ICB's #Foraging Under Fire: A #robotic flower system incorporating multimodal signaling and aversive stimuli Joshua Foley , Skylar Mathieson , David Zollinger , Melissa R L Whitaker doi.org/10.1093/icb/... #pollinators #bees #insects #research #scientists

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Olivia Bernauer, PhD @oliviabernauer.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

Please share! Do you work at the intersection of plant volatiles and insect management? 🌿🪲 Submit to our special issue in Enviro Ent: Plant Volatiles in Insect Pest Management and Sustainable Agriculture. MS drafts due Aug '25, anticipated pub. Feb '26; DM for details! @entothompson.bsky.social

Flyer advertising a special collection in Environmental Entomology titled Plant Volatiles in Insect Pest Management and Sustainable Agriculture.

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Auke-Florian 🪹 @aukeflorian.nl · 09/04/2025

NEW PAPER, JUST OUT! 👀 Insects from the '70s and '80s were already collecting microplastic, decades before the term microplastic even existed. 🤯 A thread on the surprising history of this pollutant and the incredible insect larvae that helped us uncover it. 🐛 Let's dive in! 🧵👇 1/x

Lead author Auke-Florian Hiemstra holds the oldest known caddisfly casing containing microplastic, dating to 1971. Photo: Liselotte Rambonnet.

A caddisfly casing with pieces of blue microplastic, dating 1986. Photo: Auke-Florian Hiemstra

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Sheila Colla, Ph.D @savewildbees.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Happy #WorldWildlifeDay. A friendly reminder that livestock cannot replace native biodiversity, despite what you may have heard.

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Dave Goulson @davegoulson.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Our new paper, based on data from 1,705 studies, shows that pesticides are toxic to organisms they are not intended to harm, including fungi, microbes, plants, insects, & vertebrates such as ourselves. Questions the wisdom of applying over 3 million tonnes of them every year...

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Rebecca Wang 王思寧 @rebeccawang.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Happy Year of the Snake everyone! 🐍🧧 新年快樂，萬事如意！祝大家今年「蛇」麼都好, 「蛇」麼都順！ (+ Enjoy this stunning photo taken by Andreas Kay of a Snake-mimic caterpillar, Hemeroplanes triptolemus. flic.kr/p/FKqQA4 - cus bugs are just awesome like that 😎) #LunarNewYear #YearoftheSnake #Bugsky

flic.kr

Snake-mimic caterpillar, Hemeroplanes triptolemus, Sphingidae

from the Amazon rainforest near Puyo, Ecuador. When disturbed this larva of a sphinx moth expands and exposes the underside of the first body segments, mimicking a snake head with black eyes and even ...

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Joan Díaz-Calafat @jdiazcalafat.bsky.social · 06/06/2024

We still need to figure out whether this pollen reaches any flower stigma and fertilization takes place. But this is as much as we could get from citizen science data for now 😉 Read more about all this reseach here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Shedding light on overlooked pollinators: Global insights into floral interactions of velvet ants (Hymenoptera: Mutillidae and Myrmosidae)

The Journal of Applied Entomology publishes the most current research in applied entomology, including mites and spiders in terrestrial ecosystems.

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Excited to be heading to my first #SICB2025! I'll share my work on "Automating bumble bee tracking to study sublethal impacts of pesticides on behavior" on Mon, Jan 6 at 10:30 am in International Salon 4 as part of a complementary session to the plant-pollinator symposium 🧐🐝🌺📊

Abstract: The vast majority of flowering plants depend on insect pollination for successful reproduction, but many pollinator species are in decline due to anthropogenic stressors, with dire consequences for biodiversity conservation and food security. The intensive use of insecticides in conventional agriculture has been shown to adversely affect the physiology, behavior, and performance of non-target organisms at even trace but field-relavant concentrations. However, there are significant knowledge gaps in our understanding of simultaneous effects on different types of behaviors in a realistic plant community context. Here we used a combination of low-cost high-throughput computer vision and machine learning powered tools and individual tag tracking to investigate the sublethal effects of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid, and flupyradifurone, a novel butanolide insecticide, on Bombus impatiens nesting, foraging activity, and flower visitation in a semi-field environment. By advancing our knowledge of the sublethal impacts of pesticides on bumble bee behavior, this work contributes to the development of informed strategies to safeguard pollinator populations and pollination services. Further, this protocol can be powerful and effective for comprehensively studying multi-modal effects of various stressors on bumble bee behavior, informing the development of sustainable agricultural practices and conservation strategies.

A pink zinnia flower. On it, a bumble bee with a black and white tag stuck to its thorax.

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Rosemary Mosco @rosemarymosco.com · 24/12/2024

Happy Christmas Eve. Every year I inflict this upon you, one of my least popular comics ever. Enjoy!

A 6-panel comic. In panel 1, two people talk against a snowy backdrop. In panel 1, the first person says "Did you know that if you rearrange the letters in SANTA, you get something sinister?" and the other says, "Yes: A ANTS." In panel 2, the first person says "Wait, no, that's-" The second says, "How do you think Santa finds his way to all those homes at night? Pheromone trails!" In panel 3, we're down in an ant nest. "Once the night is over, Santa returns to the North Pole, mates with the Queen Claus, and dies." There's a festive ant nest with an ant-bodied Mr and Ms Claus looking at each other lovingly. Panel 4, "The Queen begins laying eggs that will hatch into next year’s workers." The Queen lays eggs, and the workers are ant larvae with elf heads. Panel 5, "Next December, she will produce fertile Queens and Santas and the cycle will begin anew." The Queen lays eggs with both Santa and Ms Claus heads. In panel 6, we return to the two people talking, and the second person says "Of course, one queen must best the rest in combat, and the workers can't interfe-" "Stop." "But I haven't told you about the Santa-mimic spiders!"

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Melissa Whitaker @lycaeidesmelissa.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Know any promising students interested in plant-insect chemical ecology? The Whitaker lab at ETSU has two open master's positions for the 2025-2026 academic year! Apply here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

docs.google.com

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Shloop 𓅃 @bugwizardshloop.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

I’ve found a ton of Instagram insect sellers who slap “sustainably sourced”, but never seem to elaborate what they mean by “sustainable”. Curious! So I checked their pages to see what I can find. This one didn’t even try to hide it. You can see labels stating origin country and collection date. 1/9

A bio of an insect seller. Particularly, it writes, “…sustainably sourced critters and art…”

An Instagram post of the seller mentioned in the first photo. It features various specimens of beetles, stick insects and lanternflies. Some of the specimens have labels of their origin country and collection date.

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

What is common knowledge in your field but shocks outsiders? Pollinator ecotoxicology edition: Not just insecticides, but also other pesticides like fungicides and herbicides can hurt bees! Even organic ones!

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

missing #EntSoc24 but hey there's a new #insectart mural in Madison 🦋

photo of a building with a mural depicting a swallowtail butterfly, a blue bird, and lots of flowers

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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 17/12/2023

Since XKCD’s “Types of Scientific Paper” is making the rounds again, here’s the Entomology one I made a few years ago.

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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 06/11/2023

Reminder that if you ever need a meal for whatever reason and have a gurudwara(sikh temple) near you, they are obligated to give you free food if you go during the langar( free community meal) Or most times. You don't have to do anything except show up with your hair covered and say thanks after

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 04/11/2023

Happy birthday to Indian botanist E.K. Janaki Ammal (1897-1984), a trailblazer for #womenInSTEM in India, expert in cytogenetics, phytogeography, coauthor Chromosomal Atlas of Plants, 1st Indian woman PhD & 1st woman in US botany PhD, environmental activist who wrote about need to 🐡🧪#histsci 🧵1/n

My linocut portrait of Janaki Ammal on speckled cream coloured washi paper, in purple ink, seated, in a sari and looking over her shoulder. There are mitosis diagrams on her sari. She is surrounded by plants she worked on: sugarcane in green to her left, magnolia with purple-brown branches and white blossoms outlined in silver to her right and a purple eggplant with pink blossom, and green leaves and stem at the bottom.

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · 02/11/2023

What are you favorite tools/resources/tips for making a poster for a scientific conference? 🌏

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