Insect ecologist. Insect responses to environmental change. Interested in trophic interactions. Now developing monitoring methods for blood-feeding insects in the North. #InterregAurora #InsectsoftheNorth
Post-doctoral researcher at University of Oulu
"Here, we introduce the ‘recordanelle’, a single-component synthetic organelle capable of recording the transcriptome in human cells (...). We demonstrate that it can recruit (...) a sampling of up to 90% of all endogenous mRNAs and protect them over several days"
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
New #OpenAccess research in #RESMedVetEnt
Relationships between meteorological factors and mosquito vector density in an Urban District of Shanghai, China (2018–2024)
doi.org/10.1111/mve....#InsectVectors#Culicidae#Aedes#VectorDynamics@wileyecology.bsky.social
New #OpenAccess research in #RESMedVetEnt
Diapausing adult female #mosquitoes (Diptera: #Culicidae) in overwintering sites in Estonia in 2023–2024: Species composition and variation
doi.org/10.1111/mve....#InsectVectors@wileyecology.bsky.social
New #OpenAccess research in #RESMedVetEnt
Investigating the association between weather variables and #Aedes albopictus abundance in Windsor, Ontario
doi.org/10.1111/mve....#InsectVectors#Culicidae#InsectAbundance@wileyecology.bsky.social
New #OpenAccess work in #RESSystematicEnt
Genetic structure, spectral characteristics & evolutionary history of #butterflies in European #Polyommatus eros species group (Lepidoptera, #Lycaenidae)
doi.org/10.1111/syen...#Phylogenetics#Spectrometry@gkergoat.bsky.social@wileyecology.bsky.social
1/ Nature is in peril. Drastic declines and specialist species struggling is what the Wild Bird Indicators, using BTO data & published by Defra, show. Here’s what we know ⬇️
The All Bird Species Index shows 19% declines in the UK since 1970. This comprises 132 species. 📉 #Ornithology
📖 New research
Beta diversity of Arctiinae moths (Lepidoptera: Erebidae) along a recovering tropical forest gradient🦋 🌳
🔎 Find out more: buff.ly/vKlxwr4
Biodiversity shapes human health and human well-being...but how do we measure those connections?
That´s the challenge I discuss in my contribution for the new Biodiversity and Health FACTS Report from the Veolia Institute.
Full report:
www.institut.veolia.org/en/publicati...
🥑 A gall midge species, Bruggmanniella perseae, has been identified as the cause of fruit deformation in avocado crops in Mexico, with six parasitoid species discovered that naturally control this damaging insect pest: doi.org/10.3897/jhr.99.200280
Our paper on the rather large genome (1.08Gb) of the agricultural pest blueberry gall wasp is now out as a preprint. We also looked across chalcidoid genomes and found the genome size variation is largely driven by transposable element proliferation. 🧪 #Ormyridae#Hemadasnubilipennis
The chromosome level genome of the Blueberry Stem Gall Wasp, Hemadas nubilipennis (Hymenoptera: Ormyridae) on lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) reveals repeat-driven expansion https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.21.753281v1
Happy to share results of the @bat1kgenomes.bsky.social phase 1, providing reference genomes covering 21 bat families. New insights into bat phylogeny, ancestral genome reconstruction, European origin & ancestral echolocation. Great work by a team of 100+ colleagues www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Exec Summ: Citizen science data often miss species because people tend to record sightings only where public access is easy. To get a complete picture, we need to encourage people to log common species near their homes and at the same time improve access to private natural areas for rare species.
📣 New paper alert. Latest study by @mingrui-li.bsky.social as part of his PhD @uniexecec.bsky.social on the impact of public access to land on #CitizenScience butterfly recording. 🥾⛔️📋🦋 @savebutterflies.bsky.social@ukceh.bsky.sociallink.springer.com/article/10.1...
New research in #RESMedVetEnt
Body size and wing shape responses of #mosquitoes (Diptera: #Culicidae) to contrasting environmental conditions in cold-temperate Argentine Patagonia
doi.org/10.1111/mve....@wileyecology.bsky.social
An american kissing bug species was found a year ago in a hotel in Lisbon. Such an introduction would be very troublesome as Spain, and I guess also Portugal, have a relatively high hidden prevalence of Chagas disease. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Still doing this personal project of finding, photographing and illustrating the geometer moths of Finland. About 70 of the 300 or so species done. Not likely to ever be completed, but a lot of fun regardless! #SciArt
#Butterfly ranges are shifting on every continent, with #climatechange and #extremeweather associated with 79% of recorded movements. A global study of 1,758 species also reveals major monitoring gaps in biodiversity-rich tropical regions. DOI: doi.org/rh8j
Are you interested in #gulls, diet metabarcoding, or both? Of course you are! Check out our new preprint where we use molecular methods to decode the (animal-based) diet of lesser black-backed gulls - arguably a species with one of the most diverse diets out there.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Evaluating DNA metabarcoding to characterise diet diversity and foraging strategies in a generalist mesopredator, the lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.17.738687v1
Waiting for the sun to make even a tiny appearance to capitalize on the final chance to collect a cloudberry pollinator sample on this Northern Enontekiö ice cored mire. #insectsofthenorth#interregaurora
eDNA methods are opening new possibilities for biodiversity monitoring. But what is still needed for routine use?
The recording of our webinar with Tiina Laamanen and Kristian Meissner from SYKE is now available: www.biodiversa.eu/2026/06/14/u...
Started fieldwork this week. Cloudberry started flowering alreadly, which means scrambling to collect pollinators. Cloudberry herbivore Boloria freija was out and about too. Got many malaise traps up, but not all. Well there's still snow up north. #insectsofthenorth#interregaurora
It's not 1536, but Anne Boleyn has taken over the news. Recently a team of computer scientists, electrical engineers and a historical novelist think they have discovered the “true face” of Anne (& her mother) by applying AI-based computational facial recognition to Holbein sketches. The catch? /1
They’re at it again.
None of this is valuable historical research. It’s about exploiting historical artifacts and historians to develop computer vision further and to make a soft cultural argument for surveillance tech. This nonsense has been going on since c2010.
Look who arrived as well! 147 little field assistants made their way into one of our incubators. These laboratory-bred kissing bugs will help us collect blood samples from incubating terns. Stored in a fake egg for c. 20 minutes, they collect blood, which we then gratefully collect from them.
Add enough environmental noise to a mosquito-borne disease model and epidemics that R0 says should happen simply don't. But at intermediate noise, you get the biggest outbreaks. New paper in PLOS Comp Biol with Kyle Dahlin, Karin Ebey, and John Vinson.
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
Paper 19 is out: Conrad Schittko et al conducted a synthesis across a number of publicly available ALAN datasets that investigated effects of light intensity on ecological responses. The work highlights how many responses to ALAN occur at low (sub-lux) doses!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Ants like a morning pick-me-up too!
“… under low to intermediate caffeine concentrations, ants were 38% faster with each consecutive visit, implying that caffeine boosts learning.”
Bonus point for the ant people in the graphical abstract.
www.cell.com/iscience/ful...#science#biology#animals
Research station staff called my sampling sites (six tent like traps each) extermination camps even though they didn't even have any nzi traps.
Anyway, Stomoxys (muscidae) are cosmopolitan bloodsucking pests.
New research in #RESMedVetEnt
Field evaluation of #Nzi and modified Nzi traps for sampling of #Stomoxys calcitrans at dairy farms in Uruguay
doi.org/10.1111/mve.70071#StableFly#InsectMonitoring#InsectVectors@wileyecology.bsky.social
New research in #RESMedVetEnt
Ecological drivers of St. Louis #encephalitis virus activity in #mosquito communities from Argentine agroecosystems
doi.org/10.1111/mve.70066#InsectVectors#Culicidae#InsectBorneDiseases@wileyecology.bsky.social
Photos courtesy of article authors