@sejarnold@sciencemastodon.com
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sejarnold

@sejarnold@sciencemastodon.com

Entomologist, interested in sustainable agriculture, pollination, applied ecology, insect behaviour and natural history in general.

Working at NIAB East Malling in Kent, UK, but posting in a personal capacity.

Often wrong, but usually teachable.

#ActuallyAutistic #Neurodivergent and recovering from a higher education work environment.

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sejarnold, to random
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One of the rather special chafers is the noble chafer, Gnorimus nobilis. It looks a little like the much commoner rose chafer, but is threatened, and associated mostly with old orchards and mature fruit trees. It likes holes in old wood and so you can sometimes monitor it by finding its frass in the holes. There are some conservation projects and a residual population not very far from me! https://ptes.org/campaigns/noble-chafer-beetles/ https://ptes.org/campaigns/noble-chafer-beetles/noble-chafer-habitat-boxes/

sejarnold,
@sejarnold@sciencemastodon.com avatar

Old #orchard is a priority and important habitat. It's a tricky one. It's declining, as the pressures of food production mean that modern orchards really need to be higher density, and easier to work in, so traditional orchards with big gnarly trees are seldom cost-effective. But it's so valuable for wildlife! However, the flipside can be that it can act as a reservoir for pests like codling moth, and some diseases, limiting landscape-level control (e.g. with mating disruption pheromones).

sejarnold,
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Anyway, back to chafers. I first fell in love with charismatic Scarabaeidae when I was a PhD student studying insect colour vision. The monkey beetles of South Africa, which are chafer-relatives, are important pollinators in the Northern and Western Cape. They like to sit face-down in the middle of bright flowers (especially red, orange and yellow "open" shaped flowers with lots of pollen, like Asteraceae). https://www.sanbi.org/gardens/harold-porter/arachnids-insects/monkey-beetle/

ml, to plantscience
@ml@ecoevo.social avatar

Open Access article: Vulnerability of pear (Pyrus) genetic resources in the U.S.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10722-024-01990-9

@plantscience

#Horticulture #Agriculture #Agrobiodiversity #Botany

sejarnold,
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@ml @plantscience Wow! That's an impressive pear collection. We have links here to the UK pear collection at Brogdale, which has about 500 varieties, so nowhere near as much as USDA. I am guessing all these collections all talk to each other. But yes, seems like land limits how many trees any one collection can host, so many only have a couple/handful of trees and it wouldn't take much to lose the lot. Good that people are talking about it.

sejarnold, to random
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I was taking (poor) photos of a fairly large hoverfly (not pictured) when I noticed a loud and very low-pitched buzzing in the tree under which I was standing. Sure enough, a queen European hornet alighted on the trunk. Beautiful insect, and as she'd settled at about head-height it was easy to get a good look at her and take lots of photos. Really nice to see more hornets in semi-rural areas like this! #Hornet #Entomology

A side-view of a queen European hornet on a tree trunk, showing her yellow face, red-brown thorax and yellow abdomen marked with brown. The light falls across her face and part of the tree's bark.

sejarnold, to random
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When you just start to get optimistic about a wildflower area's potential to support interesting bees, and discover that another 4 managed honeybee colonies are being added 200m down the road... #BeekeepingIsNotConservation

Richard_Littler, to asd
@Richard_Littler@mastodon.social avatar

If you've ever wondered what it's like being autistic with ADHD, it's a bit like this for me. (I always assumed everybody thought like this).


@actuallyautistic

sejarnold,
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@Richard_Littler @actuallyautistic Also the bit where the right-hand panel also contains some sort of running commentary as background noise on whatever I am currently anxious about/whatever I need to do tomorrow/composing a mental blog post I will never actually write down.

sejarnold, to random
@sejarnold@sciencemastodon.com avatar

Given my inordinate fondness for of , I was very excited to discover a UK "cousin" in my office today, hanging out on the windowframe. Beautiful female Ceratopogonidae (did not attempt ID). I have a theory that if we were able to farm in the UK, species of already present here would turn up and start visiting the flowers. UK has over 150 Ceratopogonidae species, including members of the main genera considered to pollinate cacao in the tropics.

A computer screen image of the same very magnified fly, this time facing down and to the left. This time the wings are in better focus than the head/antennae. Still, it is only really visible as a silhouette, with long and somewhat hairy antennae, a stocky body and quite a few body-hairs, especially on legs.
An "actual size" version of the same fly, this time a small dark speck in an eppendorf plastic tube, demonstrating it is actually only 2-3mm long in real life. Everything else is just a plain white background really.

sejarnold, to random
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A post appreciating the weevil Liparus coronatus. Apparently this is not terribly common, but I seem to live in an area where it's locally frequent, as this is the second one I've seen in 2 months? Apparently it likes plants in the Apiaceae (which might explain why I keep finding it in arable/horticultural environments where Apiaceae commonly form part of the margin flora?). Need to learn more about its life-history and behaviour!

botanyone, to random
@botanyone@botany.social avatar

The effect of elevation, latitude, and plant richness on robustness of pollination networks at a global scale ($)
https://botany.fyi/vc3E8N

Wang et al analyzed a total of 87 networks of plant-pollinator interactions on 47 sites from 14 countries. They conducted a piecewise structural equation model to examine the direct and indirect effects of elevation, latitude, and plant richness on the network robustness.
ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/dEyrk
#Botany

sejarnold,
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@botanyone Very excited about this paper ^^ because it has used the data we collected from our back gardens during lockdown. Collecting the data and having a good reason to observe the plant-insect interactions in the garden brought me enormous joy, and now it is also bringing the world new knowledge.

JeremyMallin, to actuallyautistic
@JeremyMallin@autistics.life avatar

I hate getting messy foods on my hands. Is that an everyone who is autistic thing or a just some people who are autistic thing?


@actuallyautistic

sejarnold,
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@tine_schreibt @JeremyMallin @actuallyautistic Oh goodness, yes, this, so much. Powerfully yes.

sejarnold,
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@nddev @tine_schreibt @JeremyMallin @actuallyautistic Exactly. It's like having a mental post-it note stuck to my hands with "GERMS" on it in capital letters. (Also some things where I am a bit phobic of the thing, or the thing upsets my senses inspire the same feeling, even if they're not actually a dirty thing.)

sejarnold, to random
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Local sandpit that is one of the best nearby #bee nesting habitats is looking a bit damp at the moment! (That pond in the middle is normally almost ephemeral and about a third that size at this time of year). On the plus side, gives the nesting bank a bit of protection from dirt bikes. Hoping to see good species later in spring - not much active yet. #Heathland #Pollinators #SolitaryBees

sejarnold, to random
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I'm starting to reach the point where I'm encountering cool new science on Twitter/X and Mastodon at approaching equal frequencies now, which is really positive. Not sure I'll see as many Informative Rants from UK farmers/growers on Mastodon any time soon (or exposure to e.g. sub-Saharan African entrepreneurial farmers, who are REALLY active on Twitter and it's great), but on the flipside there are lots of other ideas/concepts over here.

sejarnold, to random
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Is there an internet-name for the day that suddenly everyone in a (temperate) region/country starts to see solitary bees? Because it seems like in the southern UK, that day was today. There was a single Anthophora plumipes in the morning; 2 males/1 female by afternoon. Then I went for a walk and saw 2 male/1 female Andrena clarkella. It feels hopeful, and like spring.

An area of moss-covered ground, across which crawls a medium-sized solitary bee with a foxy-orange thorax (velvety!) and a dark abdomen.
Ground covered in rotting leaves and moss, but with a small-to-medium sized slender-ish bee, with orange-buff hair over its thorax and face, and sparser hair on its abdomen.

sejarnold, to random
@sejarnold@sciencemastodon.com avatar

Have you ever heard of #haskaps? (You may also know the plant as #honeyberry, or (blue) fly honeysuckle, depending on where you come from!)

I hadn't until probably a year ago.

They're a species of #honeysuckle, essentially, with edible #berries, and some growers cultivate them as a commercial crop. They're quite niche in the UK still (but there are a few specialist growers), but more prominent elsewhere. (Apparently, though in some countries they're believed to be toxic!)

#horticulture

sejarnold,
@sejarnold@sciencemastodon.com avatar

Rather than being climbers like regular honeysuckle, haskap (Lonicera caerulea) is more of a shrubby bush thing.

They're native to boreal type regions - northern USA/Canada, colder areas of Japan, Eastern Europe and Siberia. The flowers are hardy in temperatures as cold as -7°C, and the bush itself will tolerate temperatures right down to -46°C. So they're really tough (also pretty tolerant of hot, dry summers and a bit of periodic waterlogging, it seems).

sejarnold,
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The fruits are bluish berries. I haven't tried them but I think they're a little bit like tart blueberries? You can make jams, wines, etc. from them or just eat them, but I think there's a bit of a random factor in how sharply-flavoured they are! I will find out later in the summer, I hope - yet to try them!

They're supposed to be bursting with vitamins and anthocyanins and things, so good for you.

sejarnold, to random
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Oh look, it's International Day of Women and Girls in Science, aka day of asking lots of overstressed women colleagues to do a whole load of extra non-promotable stuff to put on the social media feeds. (I agree that visibility is important and promoting and celebrating the work of science-doing-women is great, but my previous experience has been mostly that it's just another task on the endless list). Not sure what the answer is. #WomenInSTEM

PLOSBiology, (edited ) to random

What do animals actually see? @VeraVasas @HanleyColorLab &co present a camera system & video processing pipeline that record animal-perceived colors in motion, allowing us to study color signals in their full complexity #VisualEcology #PLOSBiology https://plos.io/3U79so1

sejarnold,
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@PLOSBiology I would love to boost this as the work sounds really exciting, but you haven't put alt-text on the image.

sejarnold, to Futurology
@sejarnold@sciencemastodon.com avatar

European research peeps: did you know that most EU & some non-EU countries have a Research Office in Brussels to help with things like Horizon EU coordination? And that many of these offices have meeting rooms you can borrow? This can be really handy if you need a central location for a consortium meeting for a Horizon Europe grant (whether at application stage or post-award). Handy & can minimise flights as very accessible by train. Would recommend! #HorizonEurope #ConsortiumBuilding #Research

sejarnold, to random
@sejarnold@sciencemastodon.com avatar

Hi internets. Does anyone know any people who know a lot about the natural history of Boberg Dunes (Hamburg), or can point me at written resources about notable species/natural history? Am likely to be in Hamburg in midsummer, and fancy a day out somewhere interesting. This habitat sounds amazing and I'd particularly like to know what I should look for. Interested in looking respectfully at plants/insects and making lists!

#NaturalHistory #Boberg #BobergerDuenen #SandDunes #Entomology #Botany

sejarnold, to random
@sejarnold@sciencemastodon.com avatar

"There's a rainbow cloud!" a colleague announced excitedly, bouncing into my office yesterday.

We all ran to the window to find out what this was, and ended up going outside to take photos.

I do love funky meterological/atmospheric phenomena. There is SO MUCH going on over our heads and only sometimes do we really get a chance to appreciate it all.

pvonhellermannn, to random
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

Half thinking of starting an hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse.

Won’t work of course because most of us can’t risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail.

sejarnold,
@sejarnold@sciencemastodon.com avatar

@pvonhellermannn I have stepped out of HE and as much as I LOVED being able to mentor students and see them blossom, and lead cool field trips and inspire people, I agree - it was getting so messy and dysfunctional. I worry about how long before something really bad that happens in UK HE. It seems to be burning through good people at a rate of knots.

radlschorsch, to fediverse German

Wo bleiben die Universitäten im Fediverse?

warum betreiben Universitäten nicht schon längst eigene Mastodon-Instanzen?

Warum bekommen Studierende nicht mit der Inskription auch einen Mastodon-Handle?

Warum hosten Universitäten Vorlesungsvideos nicht über PeerTube im Fediverse?

Es gibt einiges, das für ein stärkeres Engagement von Universitäten im Fediverse spricht.

Ein Aufruf den man nur unterstützen kann!

https://netzpolitik.org/2023/aufruf-hochschulen-aller-laender-ins-fediverse/

sejarnold,
@sejarnold@sciencemastodon.com avatar

@srfirehorseart @radlschorsch @academicchatter @edutooters I don't think it's a policy thing - not aware of anything stopping e.g. a Biology department getting a Mastodon account - and more that the staff/resources around comms/social media can be limited, so they'll tend to focus on max. reach to target audiences (students/partners/funders), which means "trendy" and high traffic options like Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. Not a lot of time to invest in nurturing a Mastodon.

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