#ento24 — Public Fediverse posts

Well, #Ento24 finished at lunchtime today. What I didn't toot about at the time (as was quite engaged in the workshops) were workshop sessions on:
1. Insect welfare/ethics - some good discussions/idea-pooling around the pathway to improving insect welfare in science, and what resources are needed to make it happen. And whether it should be regulated and if so, by whom. Very important and I think this is a "when" rather than an "if" with the current directions of research.
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#InsectWelfare

Sciarid flies in peat free growing media: everyone growing in protected environments groans when they spot them! Arthy Surendran discusses the species involved in UK, extent of problem, and some control options. #Ento24 #TCEAGrowing

Now Carolyn Mitchell telling us about prevalence of blueberry aphids and mummies on different blueberry varieties. Currently this is a less serious pest in UK as virus it vectors is not yet present but that may change. UK population of this aphid is very genetically diverse! #Ento24 #Horticulture #Blueberries

Morgan Morrison reports high levels of Deformed Wing Virus in wild bees sampled from chalk grasslands across Europe. This is a nasty virus in honeybees that can be transmitted by, e.g. using the same flowers.

I personally think we need to be measuring and perhaps restricting the number of honeybee hives in and near protected areas/landscapes...

#Ento24 #InsectPathology

Steve finishes by pointing out many game changing advances were made in this field by early career researchers doing "discovery" type research, so ECRs should be supported and valued. #Ento24

Tiny Target traps and other vector control measures making huge reductions in sleeping sickness in many regions thanks to good use of entomology! Steve Torr plenary at #Ento24

#WomenInEntomology session this morning celebrated historical women entomologists, including Maria Sibylla Merian, who did beautiful entomological illustrations in the 1700s. Was super thrilled to see she painted a cocoa tree when it was still a pretty novel tree for Europeans! #Ento24

Proboscis extension reflex (PER) is fairly well known in honeybees/bumblebees now - bee learns to associate a stimulus (e.g. odour) with food, and starts extending the proboscis when it smells the odour, even without food. (Pavlovian type stuff.) Mandela Fernández-Grandon & team have been adapting the assay to work on restrained hoverflies. #Ento24 #Syrphidae #BehaviouralEcology

Proboscis extension reflex (PER) is fairly well known in honeybees/bumblebees now - bee learns to associate a stimulus (e.g. odour) with food, and starts extending the proboscis when it smells the odour, even without food. (Pavlovian type stuff.) Mandela Fernández-Grandon & team have been adapting the assay to work on restrained hoverflies. #Ento24 #Syrphidae #BehaviouralEcology

Proboscis extension reflex (PER) is fairly well known in honeybees/bumblebees now - bee learns to associate a stimulus (e.g. odour) with food, and starts extending the proboscis when it smells the odour, even without food. (Pavlovian type stuff.) Mandela Fernández-Grandon & team have been adapting the assay to work on restrained hoverflies. #Ento24 #Syrphidae #BehaviouralEcology

Proboscis extension reflex (PER) is fairly well known in honeybees/bumblebees now - bee learns to associate a stimulus (e.g. odour) with food, and starts extending the proboscis when it smells the odour, even without food. (Pavlovian type stuff.) Mandela Fernández-Grandon & team have been adapting the assay to work on restrained hoverflies. #Ento24 #Syrphidae #BehaviouralEcology

Proboscis extension reflex (PER) is fairly well known in honeybees/bumblebees now - bee learns to associate a stimulus (e.g. odour) with food, and starts extending the proboscis when it smells the odour, even without food. (Pavlovian type stuff.) Mandela Fernández-Grandon & team have been adapting the assay to work on restrained hoverflies. #Ento24 #Syrphidae #BehaviouralEcology

Sofia Dartnell has been investigating how cuckoo bumblebees find nests to parasitise. Impressively, in flight arenas they choose an obscured box with bumblebees in over empty controls 64.2% of the time (chance = 25%). Can't be an easy task in the wild, finding bumblebee nests in a complex landscape! #Ento24 #CuckooBumblebee #Pollination

Ritabrata Chowdhury giving a fascinating talk about hooked trichomes on a Passiflora species, and why some butterfly species' caterpillars can use it as a host, and others can't. Plant-velcro and insect penetrometry! #Ento24

Abra Ash telling us about artificial flowers for pollinator monitoring. There have been a few designs of these (e.g. Kuusela & Lamsa 10.1002/ece3.2062 and Thomson et al 10.26786/1920-7603(2012)14 ) but aim is to optimise the olfactory and visual features to ensure they get reasonably visited by your pollinators. #Ento24 #pollination #RobotFlowers

Tara Joseph explains that the same strain of insect reared in different insectaries can have noticeably different microbiomes. So may respond differently in experiments. #Ento24

Chris Ranger (USDA) has a cool time lapse animation of Ambrosia beetle nibbling into trees. #Ento24

Will Paine exploring fascinating interactions between aphids, their endosymbionts, host specific strains and their parasitoids. Will need to think on this - implications for our work that I am presenting tomorrow. #Ento24

Lami Jinatu Wamdeo has some promising data showing protective effects of legume intercropping on maize/fall armyworm, though little final effect on yield. #Ento24 #intercropping

Lami Jinatu Wamdeo has some promising data showing protective effects of legume intercropping on maize/fall armyworm, though little final effect on yield. #Ento24 #intercropping

Charlotte Howard from Reading explaining that wildflower strips boost natural enemies and protect trees from rosy apple aphids in UK orchards, and may affect ant tending of aphids! Effects go quite far into crop. #Ento24 #Agroecology #RegenerativeFarming

Kicking off with Michael Samways explaining what works and what doesn't in South African insect conservation. Including recovery from fire, removal of invasive trees, and role of bioacoustics in monitoring. #Ento24 #InsectConservation

Kicking off with Michael Samways explaining what works and what doesn't in South African insect conservation. Including recovery from fire, removal of invasive trees, and role of bioacoustics in monitoring. #Ento24 #InsectConservation

Kicking off with Michael Samways explaining what works and what doesn't in South African insect conservation. Including recovery from fire, removal of invasive trees, and role of bioacoustics in monitoring. #Ento24 #InsectConservation

Kicking off with Michael Samways explaining what works and what doesn't in South African insect conservation. Including recovery from fire, removal of invasive trees, and role of bioacoustics in monitoring. #Ento24 #InsectConservation

Kicking off with Michael Samways explaining what works and what doesn't in South African insect conservation. Including recovery from fire, removal of invasive trees, and role of bioacoustics in monitoring. #Ento24 #InsectConservation

On my way up north (in a few stages) to #Ento24

I suspect I will be the only person in the Fediverse tooting about this, but would love to connect with other #entomology Mastodon-users if I am wrong!

Going to be speaking about landscapes, strawberry farms, bees, parasitoid wasps... #horticulture #pollinators #NaturalEnemies #IPPM