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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

A really nice Anotylus rugosus from my dry pitfall traps

Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Final day of Integrative Biodiversity Discovery at @nhm-london.bsky.social. We are comparing automatic model selection and GTR+G for maximum likelihood tree inference, for resolving phylogenetic relationships in our millipedes #DNA

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Practiced building a #bioinformatics pipeline in a Conda environment to process millipede sequencing data: trimmed adapters in Porechop, performed QC with NanoPlot, filtered reads using Nanofilt, assembled genomes with Flye, and assessed completeness with BUSCO @nhm-london.bsky.social #DNA

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Met the Element Biosciences AVITI #DNA sequencer at @nhm-london.bsky.social, here showing a poor read from a historic insect sample and a great read from modern snail DNA

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

So many great invert photos at Wildlife Photographer of the Year @nhm-london.bsky.social

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Using the MinION and GridION to sequence our millipede #DNA @nhm-london.bsky.social

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

The first day in the lab at @nhm-london.bsky.social Integrative Biodiversity Discovery course. We collected millipedes, separated voucher samples, and carried out DNA quality control with Qubit and Nanodrop

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Great first day behind the scenes at the @nhm-london.bsky.social, looking at the dry and wet collections

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Extremely excited to be at @nhm-london.bsky.social this week for a course on Integrated Biodiversity Discovery

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Tachyporus dispar, with 4 hairs on the edge of each elytra

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

I got one to species! Rugilis rufipes, with a skinny neck and funny little eyes. I love those diesel elytra

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Superfamily Aleocharinae, chunky with a mohair waistcoat, adorable

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Already amazed by the diverse morphology of these little rove beetles. This one is superfamily Tachyporinae, tribe Tachyporini

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

First try at staphylinid ID, for dietary metabarcoding. I'm not going to try to get them all to species, or even genus! This one is superfamily Staphylininae, I think

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Happy to be back in the lab with my spiders. This is a male Neriene clathrata, I think

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Last day of the @nerc-eof.bsky.social course on #Python for #Bioinformatics today, learning how to process #eDNA and other #sequencing data in FASTQ format from #NGS platforms like Illumina, using biopython tools from the module seqIO 🥼🧪🧬💻 #Genomics

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

Excited to be learning #Python for #Bioinformatics with @nerc-eof.bsky.social today, building my skills for ecological networks analysis once I have all my #metabarcoding data

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Exciting talk by @maximuminsect.bsky.social today on driver ants, and such an interesting finding that an extra caste in one species may result in niche differentiation to explain two otherwise similar species occupying the same habitat

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Drassodes with the trochanter notches and tubular spinnerets, most likely cupreus, I couldn't get a good view on a chelicera to confirm @britishspiders.bsky.social #Arachnids #Spiders

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Pardosa amenata, however this is a juvenile so I'm less confident

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

My first go at spider ID! Pardosa pullata

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Gorgeous metalic blue on this Leistus spinibarbis 💙

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

A very nice Leistus spinibarbis, I couldn't capture the electric blue sheen

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

A new carabid for me, Paradromius linearis, with its worried-looking wrinkly face

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Lots of Bembidion lampros in my samples, they look like they're made from black glass

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Identifying carabid beetles in the lab, here's an easy Anchomenus dorsalis

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Reposted by Mia Croft (she/they)

Nature @nature.com · 07/09/2025

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species go.nature.com/467N16m

go.nature.com

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother

Nature - Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Had such a great time at #EcoNet2025 and met some really amazing researchers from this awesome international community. Bring on EcoNet 2027 in Brazil! 🇧🇷

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Having a fantastic time at #EcoNet2025 with so many impressive and inspiring talks

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Carabids, rove beetles and spiders 🕷 isolated from a dry pitfall trap for dietary metabarcoding 🧬

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Set some dry pitfall traps with a couple handfuls of LECA to catch live predators for dietary metabarcoding 🧬 the LECA provides shelter from predation (including within-trap) 🪲

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

Funnels are working well to reduce small mammals mortalities in pitfall traps 🐁 just cut the narrow end shorter and you can even drop a sample pot with solution into the cup for easy collection 🪲

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Adding charcoal-plaster bases to feeding arenas, ready for some beetle bioassays soon 🪲

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Reposted by Mia Croft (she/they)

Rosy Christopher @envirosyment.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Despite having seen my fair share of these #spiders at this point, I've only found two yellow morph Misumena vatia and they really are gorgeous 🌟💛☀️

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Excited to learn some practical techniques in Metabarcoding for Diet Analysis & eDNA in a 2-day workshop with @nerc-eof.bsky.social starting today 🧬

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Reposted by Mia Croft (she/they)

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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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

This maple trunk was covered in snipefly, Rhagio scolopaceus, drinking sap at Gibside, Northumbria

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Fantastic time at the Light Pollution As A Driver Of Insect Declines symposium at University of Exeter, with a great range of talks, useful workshop on measuring light, collaborating on a paper, meeting lots of amazing researchers and sharing ideas, plus nighttime rockpooling on Falmouth beach 🏖

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

My lighting rigs are up! Ready for the first round of data collection soon

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Reposted by Mia Croft (she/they)

Foraging Ecology Research Group @foragingecology.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

We had a great time last week putting up experimental lamp posts at one of the university's experimental farms for @miacroftento.bsky.social's upcoming artificial light experiments! We even had a mining bee digging its hole near ours - perhaps setting up their own lamp posts! 💡🐝

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Had a go at painting iridescence, which was surprisingly difficult! Cyclommatus elaphus, an Indonesian stag beetle 🎨

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Fantastic to see tawny mining bees emerging from the bare earth patch in our garden after the long British winter

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Choosing my artificial light study sites with some beautiful established field margins and hedgerows at Cockle Park Farm, Northumberland

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Mia Croft (she/they) @miacroftento.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Buglife mention light pollution as a crucial neglected issue in insect declines, and urge the Government to take action without delay www.theguardian.com/environment/...

theguardian.com

UK conservation goals insufficient to save ants and bees, says expert

Science committee chair calls for monitored species to include groups such as moths, lice and hymenoptera

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