Free pile score! Awesome plant apical meristem electron microscopy!
#scicomm #botany #plants

Red Sprites are a form of high-atmosphere lightning, extending upward from lightning clouds. When lightning strikes, it sends electrons from the bottom of the cloud to the ground. If the pull of electrons to the ground is strong enough… 🧵1/2
📸 @paulmsmithphoto.bsky.social

Wishing everyone a very Happy #SuperbOwl Sunday!

Sometimes artistic depictions of these incredible creatures doesn’t always go as planned… like this statue of Australia’s largest owl, the Powerful Owl (Ninox strenua)

📸 ABC News & Stephen Mudge

#scicomm #SuperbOwlSunday

How do tall plants keep their footing in shallow, saturated soils? Buttress Roots! A common adaptation in tropical regions - our favorite example is the palm tree, Iriartea deltoidea, which produces a shapely bouquet of buttress roots at the base of its stem to help stabilize it.
📸 Alexey Yakovlev

**SPECIAL ISSUE OPEN**

𝐒𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞

Guest editors: Zsuzsanna Kolbert & Christophe Bailly

Deadline: 28th February 2025

Email us if you'd like to submit a paper - there's still time!

#JXBspecialissue #seeds #plantscience 🧪

@sebiology.bsky.social

This incredible illustration from Marianne Collins depicts is a reconstruction based on a particular soft-bodied organism that’s prevalent in Middle Cambrian fossil. Its odd body plan has historically placed it among phylum Problematica (a.k.a. Incertae sedis) 🧵 1/3

As our hearts ache for everyone in LA, we're reminded of the heaviness that can come with inhabiting fire-adapted landscapes. It can be difficult to find light in a moment of such darkness, but I hope this map of the 2014 King Fire is a moment of levity. Fire can be such a dick sometimes. 🧵1/2

A story that brings together calorie restriction, the gut microbiome and red wine. All my favourite things

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The Peter Pepper is an heirloom chili pepper (Capsicum annuum var. annuum) with a spice level of 10,000-23,000 Scoville Units, making it slightly hotter than a jalapeño. This spice is caused by the molecule Capsaicin, which evolved as part of an evolutionary arms race: fungi vs. pepper… 🧵

If you ever find yourself without potable water in a jungle, just look for some pitcher plants with young, unopened pitchers, like this Nepenthes bokorensis in Cambodia. They have pure water inside!

Once I hit 50 followers here, I’ll delete my account on That Other Site

#scicomm #sciart #funnyscience

One of my favorite photos from Nikon’s Small World competition. This is the brain of a fruit fly larva. Those psychedelic rainbow colors are photoconvertible EOS-tagged tubulin cytoskeleton showing neuronal connections.
📸 @vgelfand.bsky.social & Wen Lu from Northwestern U.

Speak to us Pseudomonas. What are you thinking? #Microsky

Wondering about my profile pic? I'm so glad you asked! It's a baby fungus under the microscope! Two spores landed right next to each other, and when they started to germinate, they became a aware of each other and realized that they were related! Clones, in fact, from the same parent!... 🧵

Hello BlueSky! Excited to be here. This is a lighthearted #scicomm account that's all about the science, though at first glance you may think you saw something else 👀 ...come for the uncanny images, stay for the random facts you didn't even know you needed to know!