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Jill Oberski, PhD

@jilloberski.bsky.social

1.4K followers 1K following 20 posts

Postdoc @sgn.one (🇩🇪) : Entomology / 🐜 myrmecology / 🧬 phylogenomics / 🌎 biogeography / 📚 teaching / 🏛️ museums. Passionate about #SciComm, #AcademicMentalHealth, and diversifying STEM. 🧠 ♿️ 🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) 🔜 Asst Prof, @hopecollege.bsky.social!

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Jill Oberski, PhD @jilloberski.bsky.social · Dec 31

As the sun sets on 2024, I have one very happy announcement: I accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Biology at Hope College starting in 2026! I’ll be teaching intro bio, entomology, and invertebrate zoology, and continuing my ant research with undergrads. 🧬🐜✨ Happy new year! #NewPI

Jill holds up a white Hope College sweatshirt, with orange and blue printing of the college name, “established 1866,” a drawing of the historic Graves Hall, and the phrase “Home of the Flying Dutchmen!”

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 3d

I started a list for scientists and others interested in leaf litter fauna, please share and let me know if you want to be added! Do you love a good hand lens, soil sieves, and Berlese funnels? Perhaps this is the place for you.

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Jill Oberski, PhD @jilloberski.bsky.social · 2d

Me! 🐜

Reposted by Jill Oberski, PhD

Annika Barber @annikabarber.bsky.social · 7d

Despite These Times...my department is hiring! I really like my department, we have a good mix of disciplines and organisms and we're really low-drama. We also get pizza at faculty meeting. So if you're a computational and structural biologist, join us! 🧪 jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/260...

Assistant Professor - Tenure Track Faculty

The Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is inviting applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position. The position requires a doc...

jobs.rutgers.edu

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Jill Oberski, PhD @jilloberski.bsky.social · 9d

What are some of your favorite makes?

Reposted by Jill Oberski, PhD

Corrie Moreau @corriemoreau.bsky.social · 19d

UPDATE: The 2025-2026 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resources! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

ecoevojobs.net 2025-26

docs.google.com

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Hugo Darras @hugodarras.bsky.social · 9d

@AntCommunity 🐜 🐜 Chengyuan Liu found a Camponotus ant colony where all sexual larvae have red spots of various sizes, but worker larvae don’t. Any idea what this is?🤔 Video in the comment.

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Quistote @kquist.bsky.social · 10d

Ta-Nehisi Coates dropping such a beautiful articulation of a sense of #history and struggle that, I think, minority communities understand way more than, say, your average white American.

"I will make the contribution that I am supposed to make."

Write that on my classroom wall. 🗺️

I’m Ta-Nehisi Coates, I’m the writer, I’m the individual, right? But I am part of something larger, and I’ve always felt myself as part of something larger. I have a tradition, I have ancestry, I have heritage. What that means is that I do whatever I do within the time that I have in my life, whatever time I’m gifted with, and much of what I do is built on what other people did before them.

Then, after that, I leave the struggle where I leave it, and hopefully, it’s in a better place. Oftentimes it’s not. That’s the history in fact. And then my progeny, they pick it up, and they keep it going.

I am descended from people who, in their lifetime, fought with all their might for the destruction of chattel slavery in this country. And they never saw it. They never saw it. In my personal belief system, they died in defeat, in darkness.

So I guess the privilege that I draw out of this, the honor that I draw out of this, is not that things will necessarily be better in my lifetime, but that I will make the contribution that I am supposed to make.

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Dr Thomas Clements @taphonomist.bsky.social · 22d

Really interesting and excellently executed taphonomic study alert!

The authours designed neat insect disarticualtion experiments to better understand preservational patterns of insect found in the Crato Formation, Brazil. 🪰🪳🦟

Very very cool work by Storari et al.
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Taphonomy of aquatic insects from the Crato Formation Lagerstätte (Aptian, Lower Cretaceous) under an actualistic look

The Crato Formation (Aptian, Lower Cretaceous) is a fossiliferous deposit of global significance, representing a lacustrine palaeoenvironment which offers insights into aquatic insect taphonomy. Despi...

journals.plos.org

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Sergio Ibarra @theafenogaster.bsky.social · 13d

Lasius neglectus worker

#myrmecology #digitalart

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Jack Ashby @jackdashby.bsky.social · 13d

An #echidna showing off its many excellent features:
🐜Long ant-eating, electro-receptive snout.
♠️Massive digging feet.
🌵Anti-predator spines.
💅 Huge backward-pointing hind-claws, to scratch in between their spines.
🧥Thick fur coat to survive winter in #Tasmania.
#MammalWatching #WildOz #echidnas

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Reposted by Jill Oberski, PhD

Matt Bertone @bertonemyia.bsky.social · 15d

Dark taxa are extremely diverse organisms that remain largely undescribed due to small size, subtle differences, & few experts.

Take this quiz to find out what you are - I'm a gall midge! whatdarktaxonareyou.static.domains/insect-quiz....

by @vivianfeng.bsky.social & @flyliceresearch.bsky.social

A dark, hairy gall midge fly on a white sheet. It has long legs and antennae and a red neck.

Quiz results showing I'm a gall midge or cecidomyiid

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Amy Borgman @ireneaddie.bsky.social · 18d

above and below…
it is impossible
to count the stars

#GreenSat #haikusaturday
#shahai #moss #haiku
#haikuchallenge
📷 my iPhone

A mound of green, Juniper haircap moss that looks like small stars.

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Reposted by Jill Oberski, PhD

Tapani Hopkins @tapani-hopkins.bsky.social · 22d

@gbif.org is amazing. And so is Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (Paris), for photographing and putting online so many of their African wasps.

I can sit at home in Finland, and get a first impression of how well my Ugandan wasps fit a Madagascar species whose type specimen is in France. 🧪

Occurrence Detail 1019732979

Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Free and Open Access to Biodiversity Data.

www.gbif.org

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Reposted by Jill Oberski, PhD

Natural History Collections and Museomics @nhcm.pensoft.net · 26d

We are thrilled to present our first completed topical collection, "Entomological Outreach Collections and Community Engagement."

Read all about it here!

blog.pensoft.net/2025/09/12/b...

Bugs in drawers: entomological outreach collections and their role in community engagement

A completed topical collection in the journal Natural History Collections and Museomics explores insect outreach drawers, their uses and best practices.

blog.pensoft.net

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Charlotte Wright @charlottewright.bsky.social · 27d

How many chromosomes can an animal have?

In our paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social we show that the Atlas blue butterfly has 229 chromosome pairs- the highest in diploid Metazoa! These arose by rapid autosome fragmentation while sex chromosomes stayed intact.
www.cell.com/current-biol...

Constraints on chromosome evolution revealed by the 229 chromosome pairs of the Atlas blue butterfly

The genome of the Atlas blue butterfly contains ten times more chromosomes than most butterflies, and more than any other known diploid animal. Wright et al. show that this extraordinary karyotype is ...

tinyurl.com

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Reposted by Jill Oberski, PhD

Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 27d

Biology Department

xkcd.com/3140/

Comic. [Building with large sign in front of it[ SIGN: Welcome to the *Biology Department* It has been [changeable sign: 3] days since we discovered something existentially horrifying about bugs that makes you question your whole reality

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Adam Welz @adamwelz.bsky.social · 27d

Important

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Fiji ant study provides new evidence of insects’ decline on remote islands

DNA analysis of endemic specimens in museums finds 79% of ant populations in Pacific archipelago are shrinking

www.theguardian.com

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · Sep 7

UNLIMITED VELOCITY

One of the ways that LLM-authored code improves productivity is by merely SAYING it does things. It's way faster than the whole time-consuming process of actually doing things. This is real code someone sent to me for review.
A screenshot of a code editor. The line numbers are in the lefthand column, running from 121 to 125. There is a comment that says "Verify packages were created and check sizes" Then line 123 says echo Verifying Lambda packages were created... and Line 124 says echo checkmark emoji colon All Lambda packages verified successfully. There is no line in here that actually did anything.

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Christian Kost @kostchristian.bsky.social · Sep 1

Only 10 days left to apply:

We are searching for a senior postdoc (3 +3 years) in the field of theoretical ecology and evolution.

The position provides the opportunity to closely interact with experimentalists and develop own research projects.

Please RT.

Details 👇:
shorturl.at/iiiOv

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Reposted by Jill Oberski, PhD

Chris Ingraham @cingraham.bsky.social · Aug 20

have never clicked a headline so fast www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Nature headline "I invented a life-saving frog sauna." Photo of said frogs in said sauna

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Helena Klara Jambor @helenajambor.bsky.social · Jun 18

I gave in! After students asking for it, I now made a simple figure design checklist.
To help all scientists w/o graphic skills create clear, accessible, and truthful charts!
-> Out in @nature Cell Biology: rdcu.be/erwl4

#DataVisualization #PhD #SciComm

Thx for review @bethcimini.bsky.social + 2

A checklist for designing and improving the visualization of scientific data

Nature Cell Biology - Creating clear and engaging scientific figures is crucial to communicate complex data. In this Comment, I condense principles from design, visual perception and data...

rdcu.be

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Dr. Jessica L Ware @jessicalwarelab.bsky.social · Sep 6

AMNH is hiring a #curator! We are searching for an “Assistant Curator in #Climate #Physics: #Atmosphere or #Ocean”! Join us! careers.amnh.org/postings/4579 #academicjobs #tenuretrack

careers.amnh.org

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ZooKeys @zookeys.pensoft.net · Sep 5

"The unknown is made up of small organisms, such as insects, mites, and crustaceans. These species are the nuts and bolts of ecosystems. And most of them have yet to be identified."

www.vox.com/down-to-eart...

The search for Earth’s most mysterious creatures is turning up extraordinary results

We still haven’t documented 90 percent of animals on Earth

www.vox.com

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · Sep 4

Do you mentor scientific writing, or use written assignments in the science courses you teach? Do you find mentoring/teaching writing hard, or time consuming? (Because it is!) Our new book can help, and it's getting close to being in your hands.

Owls, blurbs, and a cover – oh my! “Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences” is getting close

We (that’s Bethann Garramon Merkle and I) are getting very excited about our new book, Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences: An Evidence-Based Approach. Over the last few months, we’ve be…

scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com

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Reposted by Jill Oberski, PhD

Nature @nature.com · Sep 3

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/4mOb5T9

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

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

go.nature.com

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