iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

Neil Gilbert @gilbert-lab.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

recruiting a couple new grad students to start in january, please share! www.gilbertecology.com/opportunities

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Reposted by Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

gavin jones @ecologyofgavin.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

I’m looking to recruit a postdoc to join my research group at University of Iowa to work on disturbance ecology and biodiversity! Start date flexible, lots of opportunity for skill development, collaboration, and mentorship. Will review applicants in mid-August! Link: gavinmjones.com/opportunities/

gavinmjones.com

Opportunities

BIG NEWS! The Jones Lab will be relocating to the School of Earth, Environment, and Sustainability (SEES) at the University of Iowa in Fall 2026. Our work on disturbance ecology and conservation sc…

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

recordings of each individual streaming event can be published and archived (like a youtube video). it can be a great science communication tool that allows both live interaction with the audience at the time of broadcast as well as production of videos for folks to watch later.

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

there are several channels that share wildlife content like live videos of bird feeders, owl nest boxes, etc. people often form communities around the streamer based on shared interests and inside jokes, etc.

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

a streamer can share their screen or use cameras to share an activity while they talk. viewers can “lurk” and just watch or they can type in chat to interact with the streamer and each other. typically used for video games, content topics are expanding including art, crafts, talk shows, etc.

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Reposted by Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

iNaturalist @inaturalist.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Here, have some birds perched on appropriate/delightful signage. You're welcome. 🧵 ⤵️ 1. Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus) by tysmith on iNaturalist

A black vulture sits on a sign that says "black vulture notice."

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Reposted by Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

Ainsley S @americanbeetles.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

OKAY good morning everyone, let's talk about the ostensible katydid testicles on display here and their horrifying evolution

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Reposted by Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

Pretty sure I accidentally posted a pic of a katydid ballsack tonight so SORRY about that everybody I thought it was EGGS I didn’t think insects had fuckin ballz like that good lord.

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Reposted by Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

Juliane Gaviraghi Mussoi @jgmussoi.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

New article out: The effects of sleep disturbance on a songbird’s vocal performance royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #science #birds #sleep #birdsong #urbanecology

illustrations of an awake common myna with lights of a city in the background, and of a sleeping common myna with trees and a dark sky in the background.

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

the methods section for parts of the research they’ve been doing, then have a discussion together about what folks included & why, & what additional info would be needed? other tasks could include developing a system for taking notes on papers relevant to the work etc, more of those skills maybe?

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

not sure if you’re looking for advice, but I often feel like finding and reading literature and writing are overlooked as skills bc students want the “hands-on” experience when reading and writing are part of a well-rounded research experience. maybe for 1 week everyone could practice writing up…

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Reposted by Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

Rosemary Mosco @rosemarymosco.com · 25/07/2025

Bird sounds.

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Reposted by Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

Jenny Coomes @jaycee161.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

New publication! 🚨 If you're looking for a paper on what great tits eat then this is for you! 🦋🐛🐞🪲🐦 We looked at variation in diet using DNA metabarcoding and found lots of differences between adult and young birds and between habitat types. @ucc.ie onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Schematic of the structure of the paper. We looked at dietary differences between ages and sexes, seasons and habitat types. We looked at the identity of prey in the diet and the number of dietary items.

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

we learn about the food web early on in school, but it’s another thing to witness the spectacular growth of herbivores, all through the power of native plants! insects are declining, and one way we can help is by providing them with their native host plants. 🐛🌿💚

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

suffering is happening right now and I’m sitting on my couch formatting ggplots. I’ve never felt more useless.

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

I keep being told to ignore it and focus but ignoring it doesn’t stop it from happening, and in fact if everyone ignores it to focus on their own little piece of capitalism it will just continue and escalate.

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

I know almost everyone hates their dissertation at the end, and I don’t hate mine, but wow is it hard to focus on writing this thing very few people will ever read or care about so I can earn my piece of paper while we freefall into fascism 🤦🏻‍♀️

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

beautiful! I also loveeee spicebush it smells so lovely.

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

yes! Promethea moth caterpillars go through 5 growth stages called instars before they cocoon. the lil guy is a 1st instar and the big one is a 5th instar. it’s amazing how much they change not just in terms of size but also colors!

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

I have no idea why my fingers look sunburnt 🤷🏻‍♀️ they aren’t.

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

caterpillars will never cease to amaze me. this is happening every day all around us. in the woods. in the parks. in your yard, especially if you have native plants!

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

great read, thank you for highlighting the important roles of arthropods and excellent research on this topic!

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Reposted by Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

🚨😷🧪 NEW: A growing body of evidence shows that pandemics, biodiversity loss, and climate change are part of a broader polycrisis - but there are no simple solutions. A sweeping overview of "Pathogens and planetary change" for the first issue of @natrevbiodiv.bsky.social, out now 🔓 rdcu.be/d6lHl

Top panels: graphs showing increases in spillover events, extinction rates, and temperature anomalies over the last few centuries. Bottom panel: a map of 10 pandemics since the year 1900. Four were linked to agriculture, two to wildlife use, and one to climate change.

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

my results might by negative in not so exciting ways, but at least I can still make a nice color coded ggplot 🤷🏻‍♀️

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

niceeee. I miss finding their nests it is such an accomplishment. I love their little mrp mrps as you get close, so different from their other vocalizations!

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

this summarizes my experience nest searching for my dissertation 😂 we were originally going to include gray catbirds but the majority of field crew folks really struggled to find their nests - the habitat is so dense and the adults are so squirrely, diving into a giant maze of multiflora 🤦🏻‍♀️

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Emily PhD 🎓 @ejwillingham.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

Nothing abt this is quiet&people have been talking&posting& calling their electeds about it all week. It's been widely covered in the press, esp in the West. The Wilderness Society has an entire interactive built for people to see the lands affected in their area. www.wilderness.org/articles/med...

wilderness.org

250+ million acres of public lands eligible for sale in SENR bill

The bill mandates disposal of over 2 million acres of BLM and National Forest lands; public lands eligible for sale in the bill encompass over 250 million acres, including local recreation areas, wild...

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Reposted by Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

Nature Ecology & Evolution @natecoevo.nature.com · 10/06/2025

Our June issue is now live! www.nature.com/natecolevol/... Featuring research on: 🧬Airborne eDNA 💰Costs of biological invasions 🌡️Genomic predictions of temperature adaptation Cover illustration by Marco Lawrence, based on Bradfer-Lawrence et al. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cover image of the June issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution showing an illustration of a woodpecker flying into woodland at the edge of a typical UK farmland landscape. The cover line reads "Land-use legacies"

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

wow thank you for all the moth love, everyone! he is a male Polyphemus moth that I raised last year. he started out as a teeny egg like these (see photo) and through the power of native plants - Quercus rubra specifically - he was able to pupate, chill all winter, and emerge as an adult this year!

A small tupperware container full of Polyphemus moth eggs. These were laid by 2 females. I haven’t counted them but there are definitely over 100. The females are only held for egg collection for one night, and are then released into the wild to continue laying and finish their life cycle. I raise a subset of the eggs to pupation, and the rest are released as 2nd or 3rd instars in my unofficial “head start” program (I raise moths for science but also as a hobby, these are hobby eggs). The eggs are small (~3mm), oval, and cream with a thick brown band. Dark splotching on the eggs in this photo comes from the adhesive the female uses to attach them to plants when she lays them.

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

the background for this photo is a little scrungly (there were a bunch of breeding pairs of Promethea in that cube last night 🤷🏻‍♀️) but I couldn’t let her go without documenting her gorgeous patterns first.

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

for your consideration - another moth! this is a female Promethea moth who is getting released today. 🍃🐛🦋

A female Promethea moth rests with her wings open. She is standing on the green fabric bottom of a mesh cube. Her body is dark raspberry red and fluffy. Her antennae are feathery and dark yellow. Her wings have complex patterns and many colors - dark red, burnt orange, raspberry pinks, tan, black, and cream. Her forewings have a dramatic black spot near the tips. All of her wings have a thick tan border, and the hindwings have extra raspberry splotches in the border. There is a scallop-edged white line in the middle of her wings, and on the side of that line closest to her body her wings have more contrasting and vibrant colors.

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

absolutely. one year I had a particularly crafty catbird who took out several males before I figured out the culprit. luckily they seem to have forgotten they can hunt my deck, or I’ve just gotten better at getting to the moths as soon as they show up.

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Joshua Wilson @oshuwilson.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

bluecorridors.org is live! Watch whales doing their thing as they mooch and migrate throughout the year. It is an honour to be involved in processing the data for this amazing living initiative. Looking forward to expanding it further!

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Reposted by Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

Rosy Christopher @envirosyment.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Hi everyone, I am launching a community science scheme "Spider Spies" where we are asking you, to send us pictures and if you're keen and able samples of Misumena vatia, the Flower Crab Spider to investigate their interactions with their host flowers and the invertebrate community around them.

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Reposted by Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚

ESA Journals @esajournals.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

The June issue cover of "Ecosphere" is here! With a shot from @dlnarango.bsky.social & Straley's study of the value of native vs near-native vs non-native plants for insect wildlife Browse the issue: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/21508925...

Cover of the June 2025 issue of Ecosphere

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

I’m delighted one of our Promethea caterpillars made it onto the cover, they are such a beautiful and charismatic species across all stages of their life cycle. I’m so excited to share this work highlighting the importance of native plants led by @dlnarango.bsky.social ! 🍃🐛🦋

todlnarango.bsky.social

Bluesky

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Kit Straley, PhD 🐦🤓💚 @earlynerdgetbird.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

what about interesting scat? or decomposing critters? gotta showcase your range 😝

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