Avery Russell

How do 🐝 evaluate costs & benefits of foraging w/in 🌸mimicry systems? Turns out 🐝 attend more to costs than to benefits, similar to animals in other contexts! For more, read our new pub in @behavecol.bsky.social ! doi.org/10.1093/behe... therusselllab.net/wp-content/u... @jentomology.bsky.social

Federal funding for science ensures that scientific agendas respond to the wants and needs of scientists and the public. We do not want to live in a society where the scientific agenda is set by a handful of billionaires.

It’s time to have a serious conversation about this shift in philanthropic dollars to fund science, in the broader context of the Trump administration’s war on science as a public good. Thank you to @heidiledford.bsky.social for covering this. MY HOT TAKES 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Academics of Bluesky! Anyone have examples of Faculty workload policies from their department or college that they are happy with? (Chasing unicorns here, I know). I'm particularly interested in policies with clarity and transparency around service and teaching loads.

I'm hiring a postdoc for our NSF IntBIO project on songbird behavior, physiology and fitness! Start date as early as April 1 or as late as Sept 2027. Emphasis on behavioral endocrinology and transcriptomics, plus field ornithology based on applicant interests: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/33216.

Mask is off with only a minor mishap. Time for a few detail touch ups, painting in the sides, and varnish. I'll be done for the show! It opens Nov 5th at @btpbrewery.bsky.social at 7pm. Come see all the art, maybe buy some! (cash only!) #art #SciArt #invertart

Turnout in Brazil was 81 percent today, up from 79 percent in the 2022 election.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump DOJ’s has repeatedly insisted it will not tell immigration judges how to rule, as required by law. But after a demand from unidentified “higher-ups,” a veteran judge was ordered to reverse four rulings—then yanked from court mid-hearing. wapo.st/4BuABEM

Missouri friends, you cannot vote for even one Republican. This is unsustainable. They will have to start consolidating and closing schools.

“Enacting these recommendations would essentially create a new administrative layer of management, & would discourage experienced faculty from becoming leaders by forcing them to set aside their research—& that will discourage highly qualified faculty from accepting roles in our state.”

If Missouri’s Amendment 3 passes, parental consent for minors' abortions would be required by the constitution. Their backup options—asking a judge to avoid talking to their parents—gets no such protection. The legislature can keep judicial bypass or scrap it. NOT GREAT. 🎧New Baby Boom! Lawyered.

Trump has made more stock trades in his second term than all 535 members of Congress combined.

At least 1,500 Palestinians forced out of their homes in Hebron since yesterday. This is ethnic cleansing by the apartheid state, once again, live-streamed.

Once mass spam texts were made legal, younger donors vanished, leaving a grassroots fundraising machine that subsists on squeezing vulnerable seniors, some of whom give hundreds of times a day. It’s a horrific model. Consultants get generationally wealthy, and the party hollows out its future.

Modern day colonialism is the preservation of economic domination without direct colonial rule. Venezuela's oil agreement illustrates this logic: foreign capital receives legal protections under U.S. jurisdiction while Venezuela's sovereignty over its own resources is constrained.

The CDC denied a request from California, Hawaiʻi, Oregon, and Washington to validate a high-volume measles test, citing “other priorities.” 🤨

A good demonstration of how absurdly small insects can get. I was looking at a relatively small (2.5 mm) pteromalid wasp and noticed something stuck to its wing. It was an even smaller wasp.

I have modernized and enhanced the NSF COA generator tool. Results now update dynamically • Published under more than one name? Covered! • Other people share your name? No problem! • You prefer searching by ORCID? Go ahead! Give it a try. Feedback, bug reports, feature requests are MOST welcome! 🧪

Nazi shit newrepublic.com/post/216912/...

In attempting to dismiss NAACP's lawsuit against xAI, Trump's DOJ was both retreating from its legal duty to enforce Black people’s right to a livable environment, & declaring that Black people have no rights under the Clean Air Act that xAI is bound to respect ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

Study: ongoing damage to Gulf deep-sea ocean life after the BP oil disaster: “It’s shocking how a single failure in a drilling rig can have this vast and sustained impact over thousands of square kilometers" @borenbears @AP apnews.com/article/fish...

New paper! With assistance from great undergrads, Avery Pearson showed that if/how livestock are rotated on ranches alters plant & #pollinator biodiversity, plant-pollinator interactions. More pollinators with adaptive multi-paddock grazing due to more flowers. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

“Austerity creates corporate universities,” @tressiemcphd.bsky.social said. “Corporate universities are not healthy educational organizations, and unhealthy educational organizations cannot inculcate or defend academic freedom.” Whew. That’s it right there. dailytarheel.com/484871/unive...

if you were wondering whether Alito's book is an embarrassing crock of shit, I can now officially answer your question with a resounding yes ballsandstrikes.org/legal-cultur...

ALRIGHT belated #invertober 17, this beautiful woman, a metric paper wasp!! #POLISTESLUVR #invertober2026

Full time job opportunity for a scientific illustrator to work with us at the U-Michigan museum of zoology and herbarium! careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

New research alert: Proactively guaranteeing tuition and housing tripled enrollment for low-income students eligible for automatic admission to UT Austin from high-poverty schools #rct doi.org/10.3102/0162... @mattgiani.bsky.social @drflorespolicy.bsky.social @joribarash.bsky.social

Apparently NIH shut down the RFI form early. Thank goodness for the @waybackmachine.bsky.social where we can clearly see the deadline was supposed to be 11:59pm. web.archive.org/web/20260821... @maxkozlov.bsky.social @aniloza.bsky.social @jocelynkaiser.bsky.social

Rather than cover the cost of gender affirming care for trans youth under medicaid, Colorado is voluntarily enacting the republican "taper and detransition" policy for youth on medicaid and dropping coverage. WTF.

“It’s a Crime” Much thanks to Grid Magazine for continuing to keep the Academy of Natural Sciences in the headlines. Do the right thing, Drexel. #savetheacademy gridphilly.com/blog-home/20...

Did you know that petals have 'windows' that affect the abundance of microbes within flowers? Research published in New Phytologist reveals that they alter the amount of light and heat entering the flower, changing conditions that influence microbial abundance. www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Nation’s Indigenous People Confirm They Don’t Need Special Holiday, Just Large Swaths Of Land Returned Immediately https://theonion.com/nation-s-indigenous-people-confirm-they-don-t-need-spec-1839033177/

Columbus used a 15th-century legal doctrine to colonize and slaughter the Indigenous peoples he encountered. And it's still the law in the U.S. today.

⏰️ One month to go!!! #ABL2026 Studying Animal Behaviour in a Changing World is happening on 12 Nov 🎉 3 plenaries • 18 talks • 40+ posters • 2 workshops • lively Discord chats 👉️ Join us! Register now for FREE: https:// ablaoc.sciencesconf.org

There are many reasons why Trump and every member of his autocratic regime deserves prison, but turning federal law enforcement into the Republican Party’s opposition-removal squad is one of them. This is what dictatorships do.

there are now baby pill millipedes. for your information there are baby pill millipedes here. did I mention the baby pill millipedes

Cancelling a subscription shouldn't be this hard. If you can sign up with a click, you must be able to cancel with one. Head to nyc.gov/click-to-cancel to file a complaint against any business that makes it hard to cancel a subscription.

As best as I can tell, RFK Jr.'s latest antivax stunt runs counter to the WMA Declaration of Helsinki. Withholding HepB vaccination clearly does not meet any definition of clinical equipoise. Doing it anyway, overseas, is straight up colonialist medicine.

White-footed leafcutter bee (Megachile albitarsis) on beggar tick wildflower (Bidens alba) CREW pen flint strand lake trails Bonita Springs, Florida 9-12-26 #ColorADay #OrangeSun #stunday #eck #macro #nature #orange #threeWordGenre #art #macroPhotography #native #bees #pollinators #bugsky

Yosemite has been protected since 1890. A Trump donor bought the ranch next door for $4 million and wants a private road through the park. Tell Congress the answer is no: actionnetwork.org/letters/tell...

This is not "a controversial vaccine trial," it's biological warfare, conducted by European researchers on African infants. It's imperialism, racism, eugenics, and the hubris of incredibly stupid people. It's denying vaccines to newborns! In what fuckin universe is this a "vaccine trial"?