iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Not quite sure how I ended up with an office with this view 🤯

A green lawn with a gothic chapel to the left, an ornate fountain in the middle and blue skies above

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Also very happy to be joining @kingscollege.bsky.social, which already seems like a totally typical place to work.

Two men in brown trousers, blue shirts with suspenders, and summer caps tend for a brown horse with white lower legs. It is pulling a old red and yellow thresher, in front of Kings College Chapel, a large gothic chapel made from light brown stone

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

End of my Bristol era. Only 7 years, and much shorter than expected, but so much packed in it feels much longer. Thanks to the wonderful @bristolbiosci.bsky.social team, it’s been great - I will miss you! Too many big feelings for a middle aged man to handle so I’m running away now…

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

A very nice observation and write up of gaurding behaviour in #Heliconius sapho by @ficusorganensis.bsky.social! esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Turn off that god damn light I’m chonky and sleepy

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Cute they seem to go to sleep with their massive square head pressed up to the willow

Chonky puss month caterpillar having a chonky snooze under a willow branch

Puss moth chonkster with its head pressed against a leave trying to sleep

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Puss moths are surely the UK’s best, chonkiest caterpillars

Chonky green caterpillar stretched out under a willow leaf, being great

The big chonky head of a puss moth caterpillar, munching at a willow leaf, generally being fab

Front on chonky puss moth caterpillar head, having a much on a willow leaf, being delightful

Angry puss moth caterpillar, flicking its anal appendages in terrifying fashion, but still lovely.

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

🚨Job claxon🚨 4-year #Postdoc available in our lab in @camzoology.bsky.social developing molecular and anatomical approaches to mapping evolutionary changes in the brain, using #Heliconiini butterflies. Come join us, we are nice. 🧪 www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

An immunostaining section through a Heliconius brain. Staining and imaging by Dr Max Farnworth.

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

When your abdomen is shocked by what the rest of your body is up to

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Propylea quatuordecimpunctata, a bit of a mouthful

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Dave Grohl in the Guardian casually casting shade on thousands of academics www.theguardian.com/music/2026/m...

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Never heard of LIMS before, sounds interesting, but no room for women? 11/11 male scientists, 9/9 visiting scientists

Screenshot of the staff scientist page of LIMS, showing profiles of ten of the eleven male scientists they list (no women)

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

A delicious slice of nostalgia pie from @dickmerrill.bsky.social Back in the carefree days of 2009…

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

Where the technicolour wild things are.

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

🚨RA/PhD position available in evolutionary neurobiology 🚨 Working on a deep dive into circuit changes during mushroom body expansion in Heliconius butterflies @camzoology.bsky.social - employment benefits - 4 years funding - 1000% fun Deadline: 14/1/2026 Details: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

Shades of blue and red in a slice through an immuno stained brain showing some deliciously lovely looking mushroom body lobes - ripe for investigation during a funded PhD - and the central complex. Image credit: Dr Max Farnworth

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Another is this hovering flight where they dance back and forth around before landing, again they do this repeatedly in a feeding bout… they also do it to artificial flowers that lack floral odours… 5/n

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

One pronounced behaviour are circular flights around a floral resource, where they turn back on themselves in a loop. They do this repeatedly while feeding; loop, feed, repeat… 4/n

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

30 seconds of Irish Sea to ease your worries

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

Amazing egg sacks, and some bonus giant house spiders. Fun times dismantling sheds…

A big white oval sack, the egg sack of false widow spiders

A black widow spider, dark brown, bulbous abdomen and long spiky legs

A trio of black spiders handing out in the corner of a shed

Giant house spider, with mottled white and yellow abdomen and very long, thin legs

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

False widow spider, creeping it’s creepy little heart out

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

Perhaps unsurprisingly we also find the major projection pathways are conserved, at least at the level we are able to image them at the moment. 6/n

Models of a Heliconius and outgroup species showing the major sensory tracts that innervate the mushroom bodies

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

Similarly investment in the sensory brain regions does not increase in Heliconius, indeed where visual traits do vary across species they’re often larger in the outgroup species (possibly because they fly faster?🦋💨) 5/n

3D models of 5 Heliconiini brains, mostly blobs of yellows and oranges showing different visual structures

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

We find pretty high levels of conservation in eye structure and estimated measures of visual acuity 4/n

A trio of images showing an image of a forest scene, first as the original photograph, then after passing it through a program to represent the acuity of a Heliconius and an outgroup species

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

By collecting wild caught butterflies of chestertonii and erato venus, David showed that indeed they do - both high altitude species invest less in visual brain structures. By rearing individuals in common garden conditions, he also showed that these are not plastic responses to the environment 6/n

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

chestertonii and himera have non overlapping ranges, and are genetically distinct, but have similar altitudinal ranges compared to lowland parapatric erato populations 3/n

A map of Colombia and Ecuador showing the ranges of the two Heliconius pairs, with high altitude species in red clustered in the Andes, and low altitude species in blue clustered in the eastern coast

Box plots showing the altitudinal ranges of the four species, with chestertonii and himera occupying similar, elevated ranges

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

David’s thesis focused in part on parallel divergence in two parapatric species pairs of #Heliconius butterflies in Colombia and Ecuador, where two species, himera and chestertonii, independently colonised high altitude (for a butterfly) Andean scrub forest 2/n

Ventral and dorsal views of four Heliconius butterflies, mostly black with red, white or yellow bands and edging

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

my #Deskpets are back, who couldn’t love caterpillars…

A bunch of vaporer moth larvae, among some nibbled leaved

A late instar vaporer moth caterpillars, mostly black with yellow and orange tufts and long black hairs

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Congrats to @pinpilinpauxa-aaa.bsky.social for getting her image of a developing Dryas iulia brain to the final of the @wellcometrust.bsky.social photography competition in the “The Marvels of Scientific and Medical Imaging” section! One of my favourites too… wellcome.org/engagement-a...

A brightly stained brain caught in metamorphosis, with visible cytoskeletal tracts, large progenitor cells and many smaller cells

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Annual day of pretending I enjoy running and don’t find it painful 🥴

Runners lining up at the start line of the Bristol 10k run

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

🚨new 🧪 pre-print alert🚨 @maxfarnworth.bsky.social’s epic piece on the #evolution of the central complex during mushroom body expansion in #Heliconiini butterflies. Here is the graphical abstract:

A flamboyant Elton John lookalike with a pink feather boa representing the dynamic evolution of the mushroom body, beside a plain dressed man representing the high conservation of the central complex

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Huge congrats to David Rivas Sanchez on defending his PhD viva in style. A fantastic evolutionary biologist and an absolute pleasure to have in the lab!

Supreme biologist holding artwork of his study species by Alice Seguret

Eminent biologist David Rivas showing the exceptional visual tracking skills that allowed him to track butterflies in the Andean forests, this time in the context of popping corks

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Many thanks for the reminder, app friend… 🫠

A screenshot of a notification from an app saying “Challenge news: new challenges coming soon”

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

If Pinky and the Brain were parents

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

First time in Lyme Regis, amazing fossil beds 🤘

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

We find strong signatures of convergent molecular evolution, on coding and non-coding loci, and on gene expression, in lineages which evolved gregarious behaviour. Our data suggest sociality changes the selection pressures acting on multiple physiological, immunological and behavioural traits. 9/n

a phylogeny of Heliconiini butterflies, showing transitions to gregarious larval behaviour, and photo graphs of three species' gregarious larvae

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Next, he turned to Heliconiini, a tribe of tropical butterflies that we thought would be a good model for the social evolution. He re-confirmed known patterns of convergence in gregariousness, and linked this to variation in the breath of host plant use 6/n onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Callum also showed that the diverse colour patterns of caterpillars are also shaped by anti-predator defences, with longitudinal stripes used more in cryptic larvae, and horizontal bands and spots occurring more in aposematic species 5/n royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

three cartoon caterpillars, the top on has horizontal bands, the middle one is black with yellow spines, and the bottom one has brown longitudinal bands

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