#Bugsky 🐙🌿 Shared with me by a fof in SoCal - this is a gynandromorph (both male & female) valley carpenter bee (Xylocopa sonorina). Females are black, males orange, so the extreme color dimorphism really stands out. Per Doug Yanega at UC Riverside, bee gynandromorphs he’s seen are mosaic instead—
Open postdoc position in my lab at Cornell, conducting comparative and experimental studies on transcriptomic responses to diet and toxins, utilizing the milkweed-insect community. Background in molecular bio & herbivory desired. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31867
Job #AJO31867, WDR-00057721 Postdoctoral Associate, CALS Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, US
academicjobsonline.org
This is what the mother’s ovipositor looks like (Dr. @jnpelaez.bsky.social and current Hanna Gray Fellow www.hhmi.org/scientists/j... made these beautiful photos and discoveries):
Temperate tree species show cross‐tolerance to heat, drought, and late spring‐frost stress
Kunert et al.
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
🌳Climate-driven range shifts in alpine plants require recruitment beyond tree lines. For P. cembra, seed origin & maternal reproductive traits drive seedling establishment, potentially outweighing microclimate & maternal genetics @valgra.bsky.social @aaronkauffeldt.bsky.social 👉️ buff.ly/NyNPcJb
🔴New paper🔴Costs of toxin ingestion versus costs of sequestration in a community of specialized herbivores
Herbivore specialists with shared adaptations show minimal costs of ingestion but similar costs of sequestration
@anurag-asclepias.bsky.social @paolarb93.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
Today our undergraduate student, Rylie Swinford, from the lab presented her work at the School of Biological Sciences Phi Sigma Symposium at @illinoisstateu.bsky.social about seed size-germination-defense tradeoffs in milkweeds.
She has been only 2.5 months in the lab!
#milkweed #plantdefense
Tom Astle
Anurag Agrawal
Here is the Cornell Chronicle article about our PNAS paper on the evolution of milkweed toxins (N,S-cardenolides), to which the monarch butterfly is sensitive, despite being co-evolved with milkweeds!
@cornellentomology.bsky.social
news.cornell.edu/stories/2026...
One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “Depth of nutrient uptake by deep-rooted plants is regulated by water availability.” Explore the article here: https://ow.ly/IBTl50YCsrZ
For more trending articles, visit https://ow.ly/vjRt50YCss2.
Paul Ehrlich has died. Most will remember him for "The Population Bomb." But for many of us, Ehrlich and Raven 1964 was a foundational read that influenced our careers. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Abstract. When multiple insect herbivores specialize on well-defended plants, they often show convergent adaptations to a class of phytochemical defences.
doi.org
Milkweed has found a new strategy in its epic evolutionary battle with monarch butterflies: structurally upgrading its toxins to outmaneuver monarchs' resistance.
After injection, they hatch and we take the damp tip of a wee paintbrush 🖌️ and make a tiny cut in the petiole with the beveled edge of a needle, and put the larva head-first into the wound. Normally they would mine from the wound their mother laid. See: www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/s...
This drosophilid leafminer was injected as an embryo with CRISPR reagents by Dr. Ben Goldman-Huertas! Tedious because they won’t lay eggs on and can’t be reared on media (bug and feature—obligate endoparasitism is why we study them)…eggs coaxed out of wounds, injected, and transferred to new leaf.
