Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Sofia Quaglia @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social · 1d

Super excited to share my new project, a book about how flies have fundamentally shaped what it means to be human. Get ready to completely rethink your nastiest of kitchen pests! With @flatironbooks.bsky.social via @unitedtalentagency.bsky.social 🪰

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zack savitsky @zacksavitsky.bsky.social · 23d

it was a privilege to contribute to this package. check out my story on how scientists digitally sculpted the planet to predict the future, and how those in power today are dismantling the quest to model the climate

www.quantamagazine.org/how-climate-...

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Sofia Quaglia @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social · 20d

#journorequest I'm looking for migraine patients who have found relief with electrical neuromodulation therapies for a written article for the BBC. Reach out at [email protected]!

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Knowable Magazine @knowablemag.bsky.social · Aug 9

“And though nobody likes a runny nose or flinging snot across the room in a sneeze, the mucus in our nasal passages is arguably one of the wonders of the human body.” — @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social, BBC Future
www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

What your snot can reveal about your health

Snot plays a powerful role in protecting us from disease – and its colour alone can provide insights into what's going on in our bodies.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Knowable Magazine @knowablemag.bsky.social · Jul 11

Cuckoos, cowbirds and other species outsource their parental duties. Scientists are uncovering new twists in this sneaky — and often treacherous — game of survival.

Learn more in @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social's 2024 report:

Are you my baby? The clever ways that brood parasites trick other birds

Cuckoos, cowbirds and other species outsource their parental duties. Scientists are uncovering new twists in this sneaky — and often treacherous — game of survival.

knowablemagazine.org

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Knowable Magazine @knowablemag.bsky.social · Jun 24

Dive into the bird version of this cunning evolutionary strategy with @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social 's 2024 story

Are you my baby? The clever ways that brood parasites trick other birds

Cuckoos, cowbirds and other species outsource their parental duties. Scientists are uncovering new twists in this sneaky — and often treacherous — game of survival.

knowablemagazine.org

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Barbara J. King @bjking.bsky.social · Jun 18

Octopuses never disappoint! Octopus arms are fine-tuned to detect microbiomes on surfaces and to derive information from them. Research by Rebecka Sepela et al., scicomm by @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social #octopus #cephalopod #nature #ocean #microbiome

Eight Arms to Taste Your Microbiome

www.nytimes.com

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Environmental Politics Research Group @ University of Vienna @envpoluniwien.bsky.social · May 13

"Among the abundance of life a section of the Blake Plateau is barren with the scars from the world's first deep-sea mining pilot test carried out in 1970." writes @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social for #BBC - an issue @ehildeb.bsky.social of #EPRG is closely following 👇
www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Scars from the world's first deep sea mining test 50 years on

Half a century after the world's first deep sea mining tests picked nodules from the seafloor off the US east coast, the damage has barely begun to heal.

www.bbc.com

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Alec Luhn @alecluhn.bsky.social · May 30

New fossils reveal birds like loons & gulls shared the Arctic with Tyrannosaurus 73m years ago, earlier than we thought.
They may have given rise to the hardier, more advanced birds that dominate the world today. @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social @newscientist.com www.newscientist.com/article/2482....

First evidence of ancient birds nesting above the Arctic circle

Tiny bone fragments from Alaska suggest birds started breeding and nesting in the Arctic 30 million years earlier than previously thought

www.newscientist.com

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Sofia Quaglia @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social · May 7

Love answering all of your climate questions for @nytimes.com Ask Climate! Latest one is about... which seafood you should be eating.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/c...

What Kind of Seafood Should I Eat?

www.nytimes.com

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SciComm Excellence @scicommexcellence.nationalacademies.org · Apr 29

@sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social is a freelance journalist writing about all things science and nature. We asked Sofia about her experiences covering #biodiversity, traveling the world, and her unique love of often-forgotten creatures.

Read more: www.nationalacademies.org/news/2025/04... #scicomm

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SciComm Excellence @scicommexcellence.nationalacademies.org · Apr 22

🌎 This #EarthDay we're celebrating the beauty and mystery of our planet with a dive into a recent piece by 2023 awardee @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social, featuring the first-ever footage of a colossal squid — the largest invertebrate on Earth.

Read more: www.newscientist.com/article/2476... #scicomm

First ever confirmed image of a colossal squid in the deep ocean

The colossal squid is the largest invertebrate on the planet, but it is also surprisingly elusive. An image of a 30-centimetre-long juvenile is our first glimpse of the animal in its natural habitat

www.newscientist.com

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Dr Mark D. Scherz @markscherz.bsky.social · Mar 20

Let's celebrate the tiny, oft-overlooked frogs out there this #WorldFrogDay! Here you can see—to scale on two different coins—Microhyla nepenthicola and Mini mum, two diminutive microhylid frogs that have independently approached the apparent lower limit for the tetrapod bauplan. 🧪🐸

an infographic showing the Bornean Microhyla nepenthicola on a 50 sen Malaysian golden coin, beside a graphic silhouette of the island of Borneo; and the Madagascan Mini mum (yes that is its real name, you are welcome) on a 10 euro cent golden coin, beside a graphic silhouette of the island of Madagascar. Mini mum looks much smaller than Microhyla nepenthicola, and it is. But both are ridiculously tiny. The island silhouettes are only approximately to scale with one another, and obviously not to scale with the frogs or else you wouldn't be able to tell that you were seeing them. Which you would think would go without saying, but you never know with some people.

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Sofia Quaglia @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social · Mar 17

And here are some snapshots from my reporting with the Caminantes del Desierto, a non-profit dedicating their time to protecting the cacti out in the wild. Copiapoa in the picture on the right!

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Sofia Quaglia @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social · Mar 17

In my latest for BBC, I went to the Atacama desert in Chile to get to the bottom of how thousands of rare cacti were found in the house of a collector on the other side of the planet.. www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Operation Atacama: The $1m cactus heist that led to a smuggler's downfall

After thousands of rare Chilean cacti were found in the house of an Italian collector, a years-long trial slowly unravelled how they got there.

www.bbc.com

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Sofia Quaglia @sofiaquagliajourno.bsky.social · Mar 5

Lovely series by my friend @sarahsloat.bsky.social 💘👩‍🦳 Give it a read!

Sarah Sloat @sarahsloat.bsky.social · Mar 4

I've been reporting a mini-series on #aging well for @theguardian.com. Takeaways:

1. We have control over the aging process
2. Aging is not a one-size-fits-all phenomenon
3. It's never too late to adopt healthy lifestyle choices
4. People who age well realize aging is a blessing and an opportunity

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Prof_GD_Foster @profgdfoster.bsky.social · Mar 4

Woolly mice designed to engineer mammoth-like elephants

Genetically engineered woolly mice could one day help populate the Arctic with hairy, genetically modified elephants and help stop the planet warming.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Mice experiment as step to create mammoth-like elephants

Experiments on mice could see hairy, genetically modified elephants living in the Arctic, a US company claims.

www.bbc.com

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Jason Dinh @byjasonpdinh.bsky.social · Feb 26

he was a National Park biologist whose job was to make their wildlife work more efficient using AI, drones, and other technology.

so to be terminated by a tech mogul under the guise of "government efficiency" was a cruel and bitter irony

today's op-ed in @atmosmagazine.bsky.social 🌎🧪

Terminated Parks Employee Warns of the Danger and Cruelty of Job Cuts | Atmos

His job was to make wildlife monitoring at the NPS faster and cheaper—so getting dismissed for “government efficiency” was a bitter irony.

atmos.earth

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Rhett Ayers Butler @rhettayersbutler.bsky.social · Feb 25

The concept of the “extinction of experience” has been used to describe the dwindling human connection with nature, often applied to the general public.

But ecologists themselves are not immune. Across universities and research institutions, field-based studies are in retreat.

mongabay.cc/w0Tc9L

Ecologists are spending less time in the field. That could be a problem.

Ecologists are spending less time in the field. That could be a problem. There was a time when an ecologist’s education was not complete without the mud of a marsh on their boots or the scent of damp ...

www.butlernature.com

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Prof_GD_Foster @profgdfoster.bsky.social · Feb 25

Do worms feel pain and are ants happy? Why the science on invertebrate feelings is evolving

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Do worms feel pain and are ants happy? Why the science on invertebrate feelings is evolving

For the next few weeks we’re asking readers to nominate their invertebrate of the year: click here to give us your suggestions

www.theguardian.com

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Darren Naish @tetzoo.bsky.social · Feb 26

Tiny Frogs and Giant Spiders: Best of Friends, a classic Tetrapod Zoology article that I've had reason to republish in updated form three times now .... tetzoo.com/blog/2022/8/... #animals #zoology #biology #frogs #amphibians #spiders #arachnids

Tiny Frogs and Giant Spiders: Best of Friends — Tetrapod Zoology

It seems a good time to republish this article from the archives, first published at ver 2 in 2009, and then again at ver 3 in 2015…

tetzoo.com

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Jens Notroff @jensnotroff.com · Feb 20

#SophoraToromiro trees, unique to #RapaNui, were once used for sacred artefacts, but became popular for construction & firewood - until they've been declared extinct in the 1960s.

Now there's hope for their return: www.theguardian.com/environment/... by @sofiquaglia.bsky.social via @theguardian.com

‘The last plant left’: can Rapa Nui’s extinct tree be resurrected?

Seeds from the last toromiro, unique to remote Easter Island, were taken away in the 1960s. Now, after a crucial discovery gave hope for its survival, it is making a return

www.theguardian.com

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The Guardian @theguardian.com · Feb 19

‘The last plant left’: can Rapa Nui’s extinct tree be resurrected?

Seeds from the last toromiro, unique to remote Easter Island, were taken away in the 1960s. Now, after a crucial discovery gave hope for its survival, it is making a return

www.theguardian.com

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David Roberts @drdavidlroberts.bsky.social · Feb 19

‘The last plant left’: can Rapa Nui’s extinct tree be resurrected?
Seeds from the last toromiro, unique to remote Easter Island, were taken away in the 1960s. Now, after a crucial discovery gave hope for its survival, it is making a return www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘The last plant left’: can Rapa Nui’s extinct tree be resurrected?

Seeds from the last toromiro, unique to remote Easter Island, were taken away in the 1960s. Now, after a crucial discovery gave hope for its survival, it is making a return

www.theguardian.com

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Dr Mark D. Scherz @markscherz.bsky.social · Feb 14

💕Happy Valentine's Day!❤️
We got you a gift: Anilany karsticola, a #newspecies of miniaturised frog from Madagascar! 🧪
Published #OA today in Salamandra
Read more and get the paper here: www.markscherz.com/archives/6117
Phenomenal 🐸 illustrations by postdoc & first author, @alicepetzold.bsky.social

A crazy cute illustration of a frog with a dark umber belly and a coffee brown brow, suspended in the air by pink heart-shaped balloons that say 'Be Mine' on them. I mean, if it were any cuter I would be physically ill.

An illustrated box of Valentine's day chocolates except—what's that? One of them is a frog‽ Yup. New species of frog described on valentine's day that really looks a lot like it could be made of chocolate. You guys, Alice Petzold's artistic talent knows no bounds.

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