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

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

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

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) 🪲

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 🪲

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

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

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 🏖

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

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

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

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