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Katherine Oestmann

@koestmann.bsky.social
1.5K followers 1.7K following 75 posts

Evolutionary biology HDR student. Loves the unloved critters. She/her 🏳‍🌈

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Reposted by Katherine Oestmann
BHL Australia @bhl-au.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
There’s scientifically accurate illustration and then there’s charming. These images are from "A Voyage to New Holland" by William Dampier, published in 1703. We’re glad that he took some time to ensure that these creatures 🐙 were captured for posterity! ➡️ www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/50441252
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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
It's Friday night baby
Sleepy time bear
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Perry Beasley-Hall, PhD @pbeasleyhall.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
Say hi to Micropathus ditto and M. zubat, two #NewSpecies of cave cricket from forests in southern Tasmania! These crickets are threatened by climate change, land clearing, and logging. Giving them names is an important step towards their conservation. But why did we choose these ones? #bugsky 🧵 1/6
Micropathus ditto (female) in profile sitting on a cave wall. Superimposed in the corner is a sprite of the Pokemon Ditto.

Image credit Tim Rudman, source: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/71119620Macro photos of the morphology of Micropathus zubat, showing the head, ovipositor, and genital plates. Superimposed in the corner is a sprite of the Pokemon Zubat.
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
"A public call to the researchers and stakeholders [...] with an ambition of widening novel groundwater-based research beyond well-known global biodiversity hotspots." Advancing subterranean conservation through Global Research on eDNA in Groundwaters (GReG) subtbiol.pensoft.net/articles.php...
subtbiol.pensoft.net
Advancing subterranean conservation through Global Research on eDNA in Groundwaters (GReG)
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Reposted by Katherine Oestmann
Perry Beasley-Hall, PhD @pbeasleyhall.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
How a small number of authors can cause chaos in biology’s system for naming species and what can be done about it. #taxonomy #bugsky thebiologist.rsb.org.uk/biologist-fe...
thebiologist.rsb.org.uk
Taxonomic trolling
26 May 2025 Darren Naish looks at how a small number of authors can cause chaos in biology’s system for naming species and what can be done about it The term ‘taxonomy’ refers to the branch of sc...
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
Amazing news from a member of our lab!
abc.net.au
Nullarbor cave expedition unearths world's only known eyeless wasp
An eyeless wasp is just one of several new cave-dwelling invertebrates discovered within the proposed boundary of a massive renewable energy project.
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Reposted by Katherine Oestmann
Science Magazine @science.org · 25/06/2025
In what may be one of Earth’s craziest forms of mimicry, researchers in 2023 reported a species of rove beetle that grows a termite puppet on its back to fool real termites into feeding it. Learn more during #InsectWeek: scim.ag/40mj1S8
scim.ag
Beetle grows ‘termite’ on back to steal food
Puppet helps insect trick real termites into feeding it
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Jen Cross @jencross.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
Holy smokes! I've got the male too! I'm tearing up. Just heard from the scientist that described the new species and this handsome lad is the male. So awesome! (Chrysometa chuchaqui)
A skinny spider with swirly light sockets for pedipalps, a tan cephalothorax, cone shaped abdomen with shiny plates. He is sitting on a leaf.
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Reposted by Katherine Oestmann
pikaole @pikaole.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
Blue isopods with ribbons🎀
There are Powder Blue Isopods (Porcellionides pruinosus) of various sizes on a pastel pink background.
All of them are hanging with large and small ribbons. Happy and lovely atmosphere.
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
This is an awesome lab and everyone should definitely check it out! (yes I'm totally biased ☺️)
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
1/2 Ever wondered what 1,000 slaters in a jar looks like? These tiny isopods were once abundant near Marree, south of Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre in South Australia. #southaustralianmuseum #conservation #katithanda #lakeeyre
A large glass jar with a white label and filled with yellowish ethanol containing 1,000 preserved isopodsClose-up of the ethanol-preserved isopods, which are grey-pinkish in colour and curled up
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Squishy Fauna 💫 @squishyfauna.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Last day of #invertefest so let’s end with one of my most popular pieces of art! linktr.ee/squishyfauna #invertebrates #bugsky #bugs #entomology #insects #herps #frogs #snakes #sciart #bsnm
A digital drawing with dark blue text above saying “protect the” and the bottom text saying “weirdos”.

There are four animals in between the text.

The top left is a green and brown horned frog (aka Pac-Man frog). The top right is a pink and white flea beetle. The bottom left is a yellow slug. The bottom right is a kingsnake with grey and red scales. 

The background is light blue.
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The Doctor (Commissions open) @lucidillusions.in · 30/04/2025
I've never seen Barnacles being this active. #InverteFest 🦑 #Nature #TidePool
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Emoji Meadow @emojimeadow.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
🌺🌸🍄🌸🌺🌺🌸🌻🌸 🌸🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄 🍄🍄🌱🌱🌱🍄🍄🌱🐢 🍄🌱🌱🍄🌱🌱🍄🌱🍄 🍄🌱🍄🍄🍄🌱🌱🌱🍄 🍄🌱🌱🥗🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄 🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🌸🌷🌺🌸
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Reposted by Katherine Oestmann
Andrew Mountcastle @mounty.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
5/ Some wings have evolved strategies to help reduce damage resulting from collisions. For example, we learned a few years ago that wasp wings have a flexible joint that acts like a reversible crumple zone, allowing the wing tip to easily bend out of the way when it hits things...
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Julia Serano @juliaserano.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Harry Potter $ helped pay for this ruling #boycott
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Corryn Wetzel @corrynwetzel.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
A colossal squid — the largest invertebrate in the world — has been photographed alive in its habitat for the first time. And it's just a baby. www.newscientist.com/article/2476...
newscientist.com
First ever confirmed image of a colossal squid in the deep ocean
The colossal squid is the largest invertebrate on the planet, but it is also surprisingly elusive. An image of a 30-centimetre-long juvenile is our first glimpse of the animal in its natural habitat
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
I kept forgetting isopod (slater) leg anatomy so I made a handy image to help me remember all of the segments in order. Credit to chatGPT for creating the mnemonic itself 😆 #isopods
The mnemonic on top reads "chewing bits in muck, crustaceans process debris." The text underneath lists leg segment names "coxa basis ischium merus carpus propodus dactylus" and in the centre is a line drawing of an isopod leg. The background is a murky green pond.
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Riley Black 🏳️‍⚧️ 🦕 @restingdinoface.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Shrimps is bugs? No, it’s kinda the other way around. Insects are technically crustaceans, which highlights the importance of systematics in understanding how evolution unfolds. My latest for @smithsonianmag.bsky.social.
smithsonianmag.com
You Might Think of Shrimp as Bugs of the Sea. But a Remarkable Discovery Shows the Opposite: Bugs Are Actually Shrimp of the Land
A recent study suggests that insects branched out from crustaceans on the tree of life
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Perry Beasley-Hall, PhD @pbeasleyhall.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
📣 New preprint! We reconstructed the cave cricket family tree and found the Australian biota have not 1, but >5 independent evolutionary origins. 🇦🇺 is at the centre of a radiation in the S. Hemisphere that began in the Lower Cretaceous ~119 million years ago. 1/ #bugsky Paper: tinyurl.com/bddev8kn
A plate of six photos of cave crickets from throughout the Southern Hemisphere: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Chile. All of the crickets are spindly and spider-like, with elongated legs and antennae for sensing in low-light environments. While they share the same body plan, each of the images has a slightly different colouration or pattern; some are mottled and sandy, others are dusky and appear almost covered in peach fuzz (setae). The species from Chile is almost jet black and matte. 

Images © Jessa Thurman, Keith Martin-Smith, Greg Tasney, commoncopper via iNaturalist, Peter Swart, and Benjamin Silva Ahumada. Photographs reproduced under Creative Commons licences.A phylogeny (evolutionary tree) with groupings of species coloured by their geographic location. In the tree are four different, unrelated groups from Australia, two from New Zealand, and one from South America. To the left is a zoomed-out schematic of the phylogeny showing that only half of the tree is shown in this figure.
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Laura Howes @laurahowes.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
If you want to read one more dire wolf take this week, i can thoroughly recommend @maxhenrybarnhart.bsky.social's deep dive on what scientists make of the announcement, just why it broke like it did, and what that means for conservation work more broadly. @cenmag.bsky.social 🧪
cen.acs.org
Dire wolf debate raises concerns on scientific overhype
Even de-extinction advocates say that Colossal Biosciences’ claims are misleading
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Olivia When @oliviawhen.com · 08/04/2025
Happy National Library Week!! A great time to ask everyone you know if they have a library card. #art #nationallibraryweek
Gouache painting of a spaniel, beagle, and german shepherd. They're holding in their mouths a tennis ball, library card, and rope toy respectively. The beagle looks very proud, while the other two stare at them.
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
In addition to the reasons mentioned here, I haven't seen anyone mention the fact that the genomic imprinting could not have possibly been the same as from a real dire wolf. They are really dire wolf/grey wolf/dog hybrids.
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Vestige (Golden Arches) by Michael Kerbow
Oil painting of a scene with a prehistoric feel featuring dinosaurs and jungle plants surrounding a McDonald's, under a hazy sky
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
This project gives a really cool overview of how diversity of all sizes contributes to the stability of an ecosystem. It features awesome critters including ostracods, springtails, isopods, and blind fish! #troglofauna #inverts
youtube.com
Inside My Flooded Cave Ecosystem (One Year of Growth)
YouTube video by tanks for nothin
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Reposted by Katherine Oestmann
Perry Beasley-Hall, PhD @pbeasleyhall.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Megazosteria patula is just one of Australia's many beautiful native cockroaches. The species is found in a range of habitats, from deserts to caves to under seaweed. Look at that gorgeous iridescence! #bugsky 📸: Ryan T Hughes, Nick Volpe via iNaturalist
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Perry Beasley-Hall, PhD @pbeasleyhall.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
ento people, what's your favourite bug pokemon? I've always had a soft spot for burmy. the idea of a living bagworm moth's "bag" is adorable #bugsky
Three of Burmy's forms hanging from a tree, cloaked in sand, plant leaves, and "trash" (pink fuzz)
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Isopod Fan Account @bedupolker.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Sicko Animal
An isopod depicted in vibrant blue tones with blank white eyes. It is surrounded by loose depictions of bacteria and bacteriophage-like shapes.
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Chris Stringer @chrisbstringer.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
A genetic tree as a movie: Moving beyond the still portrait of ancestry www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...
sciencedaily.com
A genetic tree as a movie: Moving beyond the still portrait of ancestry
Researchers have created a way to see your family tree as a movie rather than a still portrait by tracing where your ancestors moved across the globe over time. The statistical method can also be used...
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Reposted by Katherine Oestmann
The Linnean Society of London @linneansociety.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
Come and see our new FREE exhibition: Naturalist Notebooks! A close look at the nature journals of naturalists through history displayed in our historic library. Open Tuesday-Friday, 10:00-17:00.
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Isopod Fan Account @bedupolker.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Panel 1 of a three panel comic. An isopod digs at a pile of dirt, text: scrape scrape.Panel 2: The isopod digs more quickly, a human arm with tattoos and a spiked bracelet emerges from the soil. Text: dig, dig, accompanied by a speech bubble "Mph!"Panel 3: The isopod stands next to three radical rock stars poking up from the ground. Rock star dialogue: Gasp! Thank you, A. Vulgare! Being trapped underground for weeks was putting mad strain on the band! Isopod dialogue: No problem, Isopods are great at removing heavy metal from soil.
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Emoji Meadow @emojimeadow.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
🍄🌷🌺🌺🍀🌷🍀🍀🌻 🌷🌷🍄🍀🌸🍀🍀🍀🍄 🌸🍀🌻🍀🌻🌻🌻🍀🍀 🌻🍀🍀🍀🌸🦋🍀🌻🍀 🌸🍀🍀🍀🌷🌷🍀🍀🌸 🌸🍄🌷🌺🍀🌻🍀🌸🍀 🌻🍀🌻🌻🌻🌷🌸🍀🍀
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
Some more really cool work from our lab!
theconversation.com
We found a new wasp! Students are discovering insect species through citizen science
Citizen science project ‘Insect Investigators’ takes scientists to regional schools to teach students to track and identify insects.
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Evelyndroid's Aperture Science and Bugge-Finding 🏳️‍⚧️🕷️ @apsciencebylyn.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
Flappy flappy flappy
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CIDRAP @cidrap.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Microplastics contribute to evolution of antimicrobial resistance, study finds Experiments by researchers at Boston U find that growing E coli in the presence of microplastics significantly increased resistance to 4 antibiotics. www.cidrap.umn.edu/a...
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Zertifizierte Bio-Christine @zbiochristine.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Jetzt muss ich doch mal meinen Kohlweißlingsschlupfthread von Twitter rüberholen. 😊 Ich hab damals genau den richtigen Zeitpunkt erwischt, um Großen Kohlweißlingen beim Schlupf zusehen zu dürfen! 🤩 Unten schaut noch jemand zu 😄 (Leider nur Handyaufnahmen) 🧵 1/x #Insekten #Raupen #Schmetterlinge
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Woolly mice are cute and impressive – but they won’t bring back mammoths or save endangered species 🧪🧬
theconversation.com
Woolly mice are cute and impressive – but they won’t bring back mammoths or save endangered species
“De-extinction” research is a poor alternative to helping ‘pre-extinction’ animals still alive today.
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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
My latest “ask a marine biologist” www.scubadiving.com/how-deep-sea... 🦑🌎🧪🐠
scubadiving.com
How Deep-Sea Creatures Survive Extreme Pressure
In this edition of “Ask a Marine Biologist,” Dr. David Shiffman discusses a challenging environment for marine life.
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Ian Smith @ecologian.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
Seems we have enough Australian Entomology / other insect people to start a starter pack. Who have I missed? go.bsky.app/8d9RtMC
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Michael Jennions @mikejennions.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
Australian Researchers, If you want to support @arc-tracker.bsky.social being awarded a Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science, sign this letter of support. forms.gle/WxfVjk9JaGpn... Q: "Are they eligible?", A: "Let's find out" Sign, repost & send the link to colleagues. Word of mouth. Do it!
forms.gle
Letter of Support for nomination of @ARC_Tracker for a Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science
In signing this form you endorse the proposal to nominate @ARC_Tracker for a Eureka Prize in the category 'Leadership in Science'. The list of signatories will be appended to the nomination form. I wi...
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Really excited to share that the first paper I’ve contributed to has been published! With the help of citizen science, we described 34 new Australian parasitoid wasp species, including Apanteles darthvaderi. doi.org/10.3897/zook... #Conservation #CitizenScience #DNAbarcoding #Entomology #Hymenoptera
Microscopic image of a dark brown parasitoid wasp with orange legs. The whole wasp is only a few millimetres long.
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Neil Shubin @neilshubin.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
What scientific discovery absolutely blew you away? Of course there are many for me, but this one comes to mind (one I discuss in ENDS OF THE EARTH): freshwater lakes, some the size of the Great Lakes, buried under 2 or more miles of ice in Antarctica. With living creatures inside, no less.
Diagram of a sub glacial lake (from Brittanica website)
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Auke-Florian 🪹 @aukeflorian.nl · 04/02/2025
Bird nests made from anti-bird spikes?! 🤯 Hi, I'm a nest researcher 👋 and new here on BlueSky, sharing the craziest #bird nests I've ever found. 👀 Today, I’m sharing my discovery of rebellious birds that build nests out of anti-bird spikes. And honestly, it's like telling a joke... A thread. 🧵
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Jeremy Faust, MD @jeremyfaust.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed. Goes beyond MMWR +other CDC pubs. Applies to research already submitted to top medical journals. Take a look. open.substack.com/pub/insideme...
open.substack.com
BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed.
Any unpublished manuscript mentioning certain topics, including gender and "LGBT," must be pulled or revised.
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hby's stuff @hby.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
#pixelart #artpost
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Those curl grubs could be Christmas beetles as well as other native Australian scarabs which are important for the soil.
theconversation.com
Don’t kill the curl grubs in your garden – they could be native beetle babies
Many gardeners worry these large larvae might damage plants. But before you squish them, read this.
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Casey Newton @caseynewton.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
NEW: Platformer has obtained the dehumanizing new guidelines moderating what people can now say about trans people on Facebook and Instagram. Employees tell me these changes are likely to inspire more violence against LGBT people: www.platformer.news/meta-new-tra...
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Katherine Oestmann @koestmann.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
Merry Christmas everyone 🎄 Image: The Latest Kate
Image text reads: you DO belong, you ARE worthy, and you deserve lovely days. Beneath the text are cute forest animals are gathered around seeds and fruits on a table. Credit: The Latest Kate.
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