so weird how syrphid abdomens often look a bit deflated :)
Biologist / ecologist / entomologist 🐝🌱 photographer 📸🦋🪲🌻 musician 🎸🤘 he/him www.nashturley.com
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so weird how syrphid abdomens often look a bit deflated :)
one of the first albums I ever got, and also I used to play along to it on drums all the time, so kinda how I taught myself to play drum set 🤘
I guess that's why it got so many likes 😆
Viceroy licking my shoes
You got it! Taking photos of holes punches from leaves that i will use to count trichomes
Not directly, no
Sorry, incorrect
Sorry, incorrect
Who can guess what im doing?
A morning view from my driveway with wildflower garden in foreground and fog shrouded Appalachian Mountain in background
#caturday
Indigenous Americans learned to process maize in alkaline solution (called nixtamalization) which made niacin (vitamin B3) bioavailable. But when Europeans started relying on maize they didn't do that resulting in niacin deficiency and disease called pallagra en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtama...
Most adorable goat scene I saw this week 🐐😍
"The frequency illusion (also known as the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon) is a cognitive bias in which a person notices a specific concept, word, or product more frequently after recently becoming aware of it." en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequen...
Can download PDF of book for free here: English: scholarsphere.psu.edu/resources/7f... Spanish: scholarsphere.psu.edu/resources/f4...
You can download pdf of the book for free! English: scholarsphere.psu.edu/resources/7f... Spanish: scholarsphere.psu.edu/resources/f4...
at recognizing that a bee is in the genus Nomada, yes :)
Short writeup about our bee guide :) www.psu.edu/news/agricul...
oh yeah, I remember seeing them rise and fall with the waves, very cool
Occasionally doing peer review on scientific papers has a rewarding moment, when you see paper with your suggestions incorporated that made it better. But also sometimes you see a paper show up in a different journal with some or all of your suggestions ignored, very disappointing...
This month's #G3Journal cover features a male Bombus perplexus bee poised on a purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). 🐝 Females of this species are generalist pollenivores that collect pollen from multiple plant families. 📸: @nashturley.bsky.social 1/2🧵⬇️
sand in the sun made for a neat bright background to this green sweat bee on goldenrod flowers
Globetail syrphid fly (genus Sphaerophoria)
Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara)
I got some quality face time with the monarch today
cute fungus
Too big 😆
Tobacco hornworm AKA Carolina sphinx (Manduca sexta), they are so cool looking. You can eat some of my tomatoes as long as I can take some photos, fair trade :)
Jagged ambush bugs (genus Phymata) are nifty rugged little tank-like bugs that sit on flowers waiting to catch pollinators, they are so cool! I saw this one on a hike near State College, PA, last week. Check out those chunky raptorial front legs!
Eastern elderberry borer (Desmocerus palliatus)
@lars-brudvig.bsky.social @nickhaddad.bsky.social @julianresasco.bsky.social well isn't this a charming headline 😬 My guess: paper wasps that scrapped off wood from dead tree that is radioactive from pulling up water near nuclear waste storage tanks www.cbsnews.com/news/radioac...
butterflyhunter eh? that's a pretty hardcore name www.inaturalist.org/observations...
Air potato leaf beetle (Lilioceris cheni) a beetle introduced in Florida on purpose as a biocontrol for, you guessed it, air potato
OK you're really cute, you can eat my tomatoes
FYI @ibycter.bsky.social, @jencross.bsky.social our bee guide book has photos of yours :)
Our guide to bees of Pennsylvania is available for free now, you can order print copy (just have to pay shipping) and/or download PDF from Penn State Extension page: extension.psu.edu/bees-of-penn... For every one of the 47 bee genera we have beautiful photo(s) and natural history facts
I set up a light trap over the weekend, I didn't know it was #nationalmothweek but it was a nice coincidence here are some lovely moths
To this day, one of my favorite sketches that I ever did. And it was a product of boredom! 😆 Ballpoint pen sketch of Great White on [checks notes] blue notepad paper. 🤣 #shark #sharkweek #marinelife #sciart #nature #fish #fishart #animal #animalart #sketch #greatwhite #bskyart #blueskyartists
Two amazing wasp mimics in my pollinator garden yesterday. A mydas fly and a clearwing moth. Grow native plants yall, they attract wonders!
oh nice, I guessed right :) the mimicry in incredible even down to the texture
I'm sure every scientist has these types of terms in there respective fields, others in biology that I find annoying: oligolectic/polylectic, heterogeneous/homogeneous, ex vivo/in vivo/in vitro (but also any use of latin terms)
I think it's so dumb that science papers use terms like "adaxial and abaxial surfaces", obscure dyslexia-nightmare words that provide no unique meaning and I think only serve the purpose of making the people that use them feel important, just say top and bottom
tree hopper with a water drop magnifying the intricate dimples www.inaturalist.org/observations...
you let it slip, you were a penguin, and probably still are! 🐧
Exciting!
The bucket garden is growing!
A glorious bee!
On a relatively cool morning at the Southwestern Research Station we found these handsome bees zooming around horsetail milkweed. I'm pretty sure it's a Plasterer Bee (Colletid). Bees in the family tend to be crepuscular and that fits, they were gone by mid morning. Portal, AZ #BugShot
cool matching colors with the background, was that is a whitebox with colored background?
The free guide to the bee genera of Pennsylvania is also available in Spanish! extension.psu.edu/abejas-de-pe...
FREE guide book to the bees of Pennsylvania! I'm excited to announce the release of our guide to all 47 bee genera in PA, with lots of lovely photos and natural history facts. You can download the PDF for free now, physical copies coming soon :) extension.psu.edu/bees-of-penn...
I think I read that as Pluto and didn't make that connection, but you're right! ha!
nope, not caterpillars, sawflies! from Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China www.inaturalist.org/observations...
these pleasing fungus beetles are maximum classy and cool www.inaturalist.org/observations...
a weird bug for sure www.inaturalist.org/observations...
Leafcutter bee (Megachile sp.) on the ever-so-spectacular butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)
Sulphur!
Lovely spiky Agave plant from Ecuador www.inaturalist.org/observations...
it means it doesn't auto format the citations in the text but I think it's worth doing that manually if it means not having to deal with the glitchy compatibility issues...anways, that's my lesson for the day
I've now realized a way of using the software the does not require linking the citation tool to the word processer (cause of most problems), in citation software just put all the citations for the paper in one folder and can generation a full bibliography of all of them and paste it into document,
I did manage to get it unlinked and be able to work with doc again, but it does mean I have to go through and add all the citations again, the expected time savings are getting not so time savey with these glitches
citation software for some reason generated 150+ pages of citation in my paper now everything is crashing / not working, reminds me why I gave up using these tools a few years ago and just did them manually
yeah, I did try that, but then that's almost too much and they all look very similar. these plots are probably not going to be used, but if I was to use them the best option seems to be to just remove singleton and doubleton species, that cleans up the clutter
today's aRt trying to scale points by sample size but it's hard because sample size varies radically
Fiddler crab in the Florida Keys, I can't decide which is more ridiculous, the huge claw or the tiny one :)
I helped out with this study on honey bee management practices, we found that organic (ORG) mite control was just as profitable as conventional (CON) but that chemical free (CF) approaches were horrible. So ya gotta control mites but can use organic methods to do it academic.oup.com/jee/advance-...
The looming government cuts that are destroying native bee research and monitoring efforts www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...
Yup, that's what the sign said
Monroe Furnace near State College, PA
Perplexing bumble bee (Bombus perplexus) on purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)
A temple honoring forest gods of bugs and flowers? Or an iron ore furnace?
Some nifty forest flowers from hike today Ghost Pipe (Monotropa uniflora) Shinleaf (Pyrola elliptica) Black Cohosh (Actaea racemosa) Striped Wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata)
Some nice hike sightings today. Hieracium leaf, turkey tail, grey ratsnake, nifty river cliffs
There a thing called "lapse rate" which is the rate of change in temperature with increasing elevation. Various huge empirical studies got average ground level rates of about 5C per km, the data we collected while catching bees in Colombia were similar, 4.5C per km :)
Planted a field of squash plants today, it was a bit muddy.
uh oh, I'm dead
edible I'll guess 1, 2, 5, wild carrot, parsnip, and yarrow. 3 is a gnarly plant that i forget the name, not sure what 4 is but I'll assume not edible. who'd I do?
Funky little treehopper (iNat suggests Poppea sp.), Costa Rica. Treehoppers come in all sorts of shapes - some mimic thorns, or ants, or even specks of caterpillar poop. Some exhibit parental care, and can communicate by vibrations through plant stems. Just amazing little creatures. 🐙🌿 #insects
This is in Central PA
It's a raging cicada party out there. They waited 17 years for this!
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
The legendary USGS Bee Lab is being shut down. The 2026 budget proposal defunds the Ecosystem Mission Area, which supported the lab. If their science helped your work, there’s still time to make your voice heard. Read below. (1/4) 🧪 #pollinators #Pollinators #USGS #Entomology #Hymenoptera 🪲🪳
If you are an early career scientists in 2025 and also a fan of Andor, this is for you
clever girls
Todos parasitamos a alguien
spotted a nifty Nomada yesterday, they are parasitic bees that lay eggs in the nest of other bees :)
¡Qué hermosa!
I dare say that Cerocoma schreberi's (Meloidae) antennae are the most extravagant I have ever seen on a beetle
Ah, it's a stack, I see!
great lighting and POV. always kinda tricky to get the eyes and elytra in focus on those plump beetles but you did it :)
Sumac flea beetle (Blepharida rhois) in Montana - "flea" because they can jump using beefy hind legs. Adults lay eggs within a casing of excrement which contains toxins from the sumac plant, and larvae wear a "poop shield" on their back for the same protective reason. I mean, whatever works. 🐙🌿💩
Chonk Galaxy
"Hello, my name is Turdus migratorius"
🤬 🤬🤬 Such amazing work done there. Please do contact your congress critters per this thread.
My look and vibe when I started grad school at NC State in 2009 😆😆☮️
"Hybrid seeds planted by the farmer produce similar plants, but the seeds of the next generation from those hybrids will not consistently have the desired characteristics because of genetic assortment." Cool, didn't know that en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_...
"Plant some of these monsters for your goblins" compelling marketing for these gourd seeds :P trueleafmarket.com/products/gou...
