Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · 23d

🐝🏅🥹

Botanical Society of America @botsocamerica.bsky.social · 25d

🌿 We are excited to present the recipients of the 2025 Bill Dahl Graduate Student Research Awards! 🌟

Each award provides $1,500 to support graduate student research across the botanical sciences.

For more information, visit: botany.org/home/awards/...

#BSA2025AwardsBlitz #IamaBotanist #BSAGSRAs

Graphic announcing 2025 Botanical Society of America Bill Dahl Graduate Student Research Award recipients. A list of 25 names is displayed in three columns on a dark green background.

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Aug 27

Thrilled to have made it to Kolkata for #Behaviour2025! It’s a full circle moment for me as my interest and career in biological research started right here at a KVPY camp I attended just about a decade ago. And grateful for the nicest conference swag! 🐅

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Aug 25

Hi! I am Saaj's friend from Cornell! I am going to this conference too (presenting on the 30th) and look forward to connecting!

Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Aug 25

Hi Sushant, I am going too and presenting on the 30th. Looking forward to connecting again!

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Jul 17

paper up now :) academic.oup.com/icb/advance-...

Ethomics for Ecotoxicology: Automated Tracking Reveals Diverse Effects of Insecticides on Bumble Bee Foraging and In-Nest Behavior

Synopsis. The majority of flowering plants depend on insect pollination for reproduction and declining pollinator populations pose a threat to biodiversity

academic.oup.com

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Jul 17

Beautiful documentary covering research from all over the US on bee declines and conservation. Our work on the combined effects of pesticides and extreme weather on bumble bees is featured at ~45:45. Incredibly cool filmmaking by @neillosin.bsky.social and team! 🐝🥵📹🧪

Olivia Bernauer, PhD @oliviabernauer.bsky.social · Jul 17

Check out the latest episode of Human Footprint (The Honey Trap) for some insight into my recent research and the things happening in @jamescrall.bsky.social's lab!🐝 Honored to be a part of this, it was so fun! Many thanks to the crew at Day's Edge @neillosin.bsky.social
www.pbs.org/video/the-ho...

Human Footprint | The Honey Trap | Season 2 | Episode 4

Shane investigates the future of bees, from honey bees to wild native species, in a changing world.

www.pbs.org

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Reposted by Anupreksha Jain

SICB journals @sicbjournals.bsky.social · May 23

ICB's
#Foraging Under Fire: A #robotic flower system incorporating multimodal signaling and aversive stimuli
Joshua Foley , Skylar Mathieson , David Zollinger , Melissa R L Whitaker
doi.org/10.1093/icb/...

#pollinators #bees #insects #research #scientists

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Apr 22

very insightful and important paper! i look forward to digging in

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Reposted by Anupreksha Jain

Olivia Bernauer, PhD @oliviabernauer.bsky.social · Apr 18

Please share! Do you work at the intersection of plant volatiles and insect management? 🌿🪲
Submit to our special issue in Enviro Ent: Plant Volatiles in Insect Pest Management and Sustainable Agriculture. MS drafts due Aug '25, anticipated pub. Feb '26; DM for details!
@entothompson.bsky.social

Flyer advertising a special collection in Environmental Entomology titled Plant Volatiles in Insect Pest Management and Sustainable Agriculture.

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Reposted by Anupreksha Jain

Auke-Florian 🪹 @aukeflorian.nl · Apr 9

NEW PAPER, JUST OUT! 👀

Insects from the '70s and '80s were already collecting microplastic, decades before the term microplastic even existed. 🤯

A thread on the surprising history of this pollutant and the incredible insect larvae that helped us uncover it. 🐛

Let's dive in! 🧵👇 1/x

Lead author Auke-Florian Hiemstra holds the oldest known caddisfly casing containing microplastic, dating to 1971. Photo: Liselotte Rambonnet.

A caddisfly casing with pieces of blue microplastic, dating 1986. Photo: Auke-Florian Hiemstra

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Apr 3

check this out: www.printables.com/model/892037...

Inchworm Caterpillar Automaton by Dawlight | Download free STL model | Printables.com

A simple automaton depicting an caterpillar crawling around a leaf | Download free 3D printable STL models

www.printables.com

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Apr 2

What's the email address?

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Reposted by Anupreksha Jain

Sheila Colla, Ph.D @savewildbees.bsky.social · Mar 3

Happy #WorldWildlifeDay. A friendly reminder that livestock cannot replace native biodiversity, despite what you may have heard.

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Reposted by Anupreksha Jain

Dave Goulson @davegoulson.bsky.social · Feb 13

Our new paper, based on data from 1,705 studies, shows that pesticides are toxic to organisms they are not intended to harm, including fungi, microbes, plants, insects, & vertebrates such as ourselves. Questions the wisdom of applying over 3 million tonnes of them every year...

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Reposted by Anupreksha Jain

Mindy Weisberger @laminda.bsky.social · Feb 9

One of the neat things about owls is that you can see their eyeballs through their ears, if that isn’t superb I don’t know what is #SuperbOwl

That Really Is a Live Owl's Eyeball, Seen Through Its Ear

Some say that eyes are the windows to the soul. But in some owls, the ears are windows to the animals' eyeballs.

www.livescience.com

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Reposted by Anupreksha Jain

Rebecca Wang 王思寧 @rebeccawang.bsky.social · Jan 29

Happy Year of the Snake everyone! 🐍🧧

新年快樂，萬事如意！祝大家今年「蛇」麼都好, 「蛇」麼都順！

(+ Enjoy this stunning photo taken by Andreas Kay of a Snake-mimic caterpillar, Hemeroplanes triptolemus. flic.kr/p/FKqQA4 - cus bugs are just awesome like that 😎)

#LunarNewYear #YearoftheSnake #Bugsky

Snake-mimic caterpillar, Hemeroplanes triptolemus, Sphingidae

from the Amazon rainforest near Puyo, Ecuador. When disturbed this larva of a sphinx moth expands and exposes the underside of the first body segments, mimicking a snake head with black eyes and even ...

flic.kr

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Jan 15

Recently attended a talk by Stokes Baker (Detroit-Mercy) along those lines

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Reposted by Anupreksha Jain

Joan Díaz-Calafat @jdiazcalafat.bsky.social · Jun 6

We still need to figure out whether this pollen reaches any flower stigma and fertilization takes place. But this is as much as we could get from citizen science data for now 😉

Read more about all this reseach here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Shedding light on overlooked pollinators: Global insights into floral interactions of velvet ants (Hymenoptera: Mutillidae and Myrmosidae)

The Journal of Applied Entomology publishes the most current research in applied entomology, including mites and spiders in terrestrial ecosystems.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Jan 3

In prep! I'll post here when published :)

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Jan 2

Excited to be heading to my first #SICB2025! I'll share my work on "Automating bumble bee tracking to study sublethal impacts of pesticides on behavior" on Mon, Jan 6 at 10:30 am in International Salon 4 as part of a complementary session to the plant-pollinator symposium 🧐🐝🌺📊

Abstract: The vast majority of flowering plants depend on insect pollination for successful reproduction, but many pollinator species are in decline due to anthropogenic stressors, with dire consequences for biodiversity conservation and food security. The intensive use of insecticides in conventional agriculture has been shown to adversely affect the physiology, behavior, and performance of non-target organisms at even trace but field-relavant concentrations. However, there are significant knowledge gaps in our understanding of simultaneous effects on different types of behaviors in a realistic plant community context. Here we used a combination of low-cost high-throughput computer vision and machine learning powered tools and individual tag tracking to investigate the sublethal effects of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid, and flupyradifurone, a novel butanolide insecticide, on Bombus impatiens nesting, foraging activity, and flower visitation in a semi-field environment. By advancing our knowledge of the sublethal impacts of pesticides on bumble bee behavior, this work contributes to the development of informed strategies to safeguard pollinator populations and pollination services. Further, this protocol can be powerful and effective for comprehensively studying multi-modal effects of various stressors on bumble bee behavior, informing the development of sustainable agricultural practices and conservation strategies.

A pink zinnia flower. On it, a bumble bee with a black and white tag stuck to its thorax.

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Reposted by Anupreksha Jain

Rosemary Mosco @rosemarymosco.com · Dec 24

Happy Christmas Eve. Every year I inflict this upon you, one of my least popular comics ever. Enjoy!

A 6-panel comic. In panel 1, two people talk against a snowy backdrop. In panel 1, the first person says "Did you know that if you rearrange the letters in SANTA, you get something sinister?" and the other says, "Yes: A ANTS." In panel 2, the first person says "Wait, no, that's-" The second says, "How do you think Santa finds his way to all those homes at night? Pheromone trails!" In panel 3, we're down in an ant nest. "Once the night is over, Santa returns to the North Pole, mates with the Queen Claus, and dies." There's a festive ant nest with an ant-bodied Mr and Ms Claus looking at each other lovingly. Panel 4, "The Queen begins laying eggs that will hatch into next year’s workers." The Queen lays eggs, and the workers are ant larvae with elf heads. Panel 5, "Next December, she will produce fertile Queens and Santas and the cycle will begin anew." The Queen lays eggs with both Santa and Ms Claus heads. In panel 6, we return to the two people talking, and the second person says "Of course, one queen must best the rest in combat, and the workers can't interfe-" "Stop." "But I haven't told you about the Santa-mimic spiders!"

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Dec 16

congratulations, well deserved! <3

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Melissa Whitaker @lycaeidesmelissa.bsky.social · Dec 15

Know any promising students interested in plant-insect chemical ecology? The Whitaker lab at ETSU has two open master's positions for the 2025-2026 academic year!

Apply here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

docs.google.com

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Reposted by Anupreksha Jain

Shloop 𓅃 @bugwizardshloop.bsky.social · Dec 13

I’ve found a ton of Instagram insect sellers who slap “sustainably sourced”, but never seem to elaborate what they mean by “sustainable”. Curious! So I checked their pages to see what I can find.

This one didn’t even try to hide it. You can see labels stating origin country and collection date. 1/9

A bio of an insect seller. Particularly, it writes, “…sustainably sourced critters and art…”

An Instagram post of the seller mentioned in the first photo. It features various specimens of beetles, stick insects and lanternflies. Some of the specimens have labels of their origin country and collection date.

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Anupreksha Jain @anupreksha.bsky.social · Nov 20

Please add me 🙋‍♀️
And I'm sure you get this all the time, but your paper on bumbles damaging plants to accelerate phenology is so cool!!

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