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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈

@delfreddy.bsky.social
511 followers 1.4K following 16 posts

Parasites are pretty great. zombie ants 🇺🇸 -> water fleas 🇨🇭 -> zombie plants 🇬🇧. Current postdoc at JIC 🪴. She/her.

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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
The event was a great success! Two sold-out sessions full of curious naturalists from school children to retirees. After months of planning, it was so cool seeing it finally come together! Huge thank you to my wonderful colleagues who helped make this an enriching educational experience for us all!
Wide shot of the room with 5 workshop leaders at the front and participants sitting at tables in teams of 4A young participant writing the Latin name of a gall inducer using Knopper Gall inkOlder participants (former teachers!) examining insect cards at their team tableWorkshop leaders showing young participants gall specimens under microscopes
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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Gall images from @FieldStudiesC.bsky.social, host plants from @JohnInnesCentre.bsky.social, and insects hand drawn for this event by local artist @AmberHall.bsky.social. Winning teams got their own gall ID guides generously donated by the British Plant Gall Society.
Team table laid out with detective gear including magnifying glass, gall specimens and insect flash cards with identification cluesGall card being collected from a tree. Each card has an image of a gall on one said and an image of the host plant on the other side.Close up of "Gall detective" badges that all workshop participants received. The book Plant Galls by Margaret Redfern is also on display
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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Last week I had the honor to lead an outreach workshop about Plant Galls at the award-winning #NorwichScienceFestival Participating nature detectives competed in teams to match galls to their insect inducers using custom-made flashcards with beautiful illustrations...
Me and my colleagues posing in our lab coats in front of a tree decorated with gall cardsA workshop participant collects a gall card from a tree using a litter pickerAttentive nature detectives examine insect cards to find the gall causerWorkshop leaders show participants how to examine gall specimens under a microscope
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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
Had a great time treasure-hunting for galls with the British Plant Gall Society this weekend! Also proud to introduce my son to the amazing world of cecidology. 😍
Robin's pin cushion (Diplolepis rosae) on roseA founding member of the society shows my 2 year old son a gall from a nearby oak tree.Sputnik gall (Diplolepis nervosa) on roseEriophyes inangulis (mite gall) on an alder leaf
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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
We tackle this question using the bacterial parasite Pasteuria ramosa and its crustacean host, Daphnia magna, which coevolve under Red Queen dynamics and follow a matching-allele model. Theory predicts such a system should show a modular network structure. Our findings reveal a more complex picture.
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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
What's impressed me the most is how collaborative and supportive the lab seems. Being a newcomer can be overwhelming, but I'm thrilled to be part of the enthusiastic and brilliant "Saplings" 🌱 team (those of us characterizing SAP proteins), and looking forward to doing some awesome science in 2025!
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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
and I managed to have some fun with my labmates :)
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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
I also co-created and presented a poster for an internal conference...
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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
Learning the basics of agro-infiltration (like many of the techniques I'm learning, this one feels like magic 🪄 )...
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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
Handling plants: Transplanting tiny seedlings and watching them grow...
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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
Cloning genes into plasmid vectors...
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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
First 2 months as a postdoc in the Hogenhout lab = whirlwind! Big goal: characterize bacterial effectors that turn plants 🪴 into zombies 🧟‍♀️. Really cool system that I've admired for years; also my first time working with plants and doing molecular work, so I'm learning A LOT! Some highlights: Y2H...🧵
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