Hedgewizard

Biologist, educator, ant-whisperer

[Hedgewizard @shafferz1]

Whirligig beetle aggregation seen along the bank of the Missouri River in St. Charles, MO: some cool collective swarm behavior!

[Kate Beaton @beatonna]

I turned 40 over the weekend and fuck youth forever baby live the dream

[Be the change you want to be @AgBioWorld]

A sea slug that can do photosynthesis just like a plant! It takes genes from the algae it eats to perform photosynthesis and thus get all the energy it needs from sunlight, allowing it to survive without food for months! Clever eh?

[Taka Sasaki @Taka_Sasaki_]

I have two funded positions for graduate students.
Project #1. greenbeard effects in the fire ant (with Ken Ross and Jocelyn Millar)
Project #2. cumulative culture in ant colonies (with Josep Call and Mathieu Charbonneau)
For details, please see https://t.co/MOYGlK4txs

[Sandra Rehan @sanrehan]

New paper: The use of pinned specimens helps uncover patterns of genetic differentiation and signatures of selection in a wild pollinator 🐝🧬🔬https://t.co/dOS3noz6bJ @faridasamadzada @NSERC_CRSNG

[Historic Vids @historyinmemes]

Yuri Knorozov was a Soviet linguist who deciphered the Mayan script in 1953. He had a habit of listing his Siamese cat Asya as a co-author to many of his works; however, his editors would always remove her. Knorozov would also use this photo with Asya as his official author photo and would get upset whenever his editors would crop her out.

Deciphering the Mayan script was extremely challenging because there was no Rosetta Stone to provide translations into other languages. The only clues that remained were from Mayan stelae (stone monuments) that were scattered throughout several different ruins.

Knorozov worked in isolation in the Soviet Union and was able to make major advancements without ever stepping foot in Central America. His breakthrough was rejecting the notion that the Maya glyphs were based on an alphabet but rather a syllabary (a set of written characters representing syllables).

When Knorozov published his work, he was attacked and dismissed by several prominent academics, most notably, J. Eric S. Thompson, a British scholar who believed that the Mayan script was anti-phonetic and based on ideographic principles. It also did not help that Knorozov published his research during the height of the Cold War when Western scholars were quick to dismiss the works of Soviet scholars as being tainted by Marxist ideology.

It took decades for Knorozov to finally receive the recognition he deserved. One of Knorozov's earliest supporters was an American Anthropology professor at Yale by the name of Michael D. Coe who would later go on to write, "Yuri Knorozov, a man who was far removed from the Western scientific establishment and who, prior to the late 1980s, never saw a Mayan ruin nor touched a real Mayan inscription, had nevertheless, against all odds, made possible the modern decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing."

[Grey Monroe @Grey_Monroe]

Are mutations random?

Here is a brief survey of groundbreaking mechanistic work that all evolutionary biologists should be familiar with:

[Hedgewizard @shafferz1]

Dear science friends I hope you will check out my band's new album "Hard Times". Beside being a behavioral ecologist, I have folk/rock band called 'Jack Dempsey'. This is our third album! https://t.co/tVXhxMIesE

[Athena Aktipis @AthenaAktipis]

Did you lose all your cows in the apocalypse? Check out the interactive Osotua game at the @exploratorium in SF & read about it in @news4anthros @Lee_Cronk https://t.co/nLvQhBDmYb

[Tim Linksvayer @tlinksvayer]

I’m thrilled to be starting as the Robert A Johnson Chair in Social Insect Research as part of the Social Insect Research Group @asuSOLS in August! I’m especially honored by this endowed chair position because the incomparable Bert Hoelldobler held it until his recent retirement

[Hedgewizard @shafferz1]

Wow - just look at the big size difference between these ant castes! Anyone able to identify this species? Bosa, Sardegna July 2023

[ABC News @ABC]

LATEST: For four days in a row, the planet reached its hottest day ever recorded as regions all over the world endure dangerous heat. https://t.co/wkIHrqaMVP

[Chris Thorogood @thorogoodchris1]

At the start of the pandemic, I began a new series of watercolour illustrations depicting wild flowers of the Eastern Canary Islands, for a future book and exhibition. Three years on, here is a montage of about a third of them.

[Sam England @SamJakeEngland]

So then we wanted to characterize the phenomenon a bit more formally - what would the electric field around a typical host of a tick look like? Enter the most ridiculous figure I have every created - the electrostatic profile of a cow🐮

[The Royal Society @royalsociety]

#OnThisDay in 1858, modern biology took a huge step forward as papers by Charles Darwin FRS and Alfred Russel Wallace FRS outlining the theory of evolution by natural selection were read at the @LinneanSociety: https://t.co/yRM7aJkGsJ

[Josh Gibson, Ph.D. @DrStrangeAnt]

Updated obstacle course for Princess Bouncy-Pants! She technically didn't make it to the finish line since the cricket left his post, but I think she did a good job regardless 🥹❤️🕷️🕸️

[Hedgewizard @shafferz1]

Formicine ants tending to Aphids Florence, Italy June 2023

[Francois Boonzaaier @Fransuchus]

I had chicken yesterday and had a moment looking at the modified anatomy of what is a dinosaur arm. Birds are dinosaurs.

[Hedgewizard @shafferz1]

Depictions of Pinocchio’s cricket friend at the Pinocchio museum in Florence, Italy. Anyone know what species these depictions might be of?

[Hedgewizard @shafferz1]

Seen in Florence, Italy - some pretty cute bees!

[Matt Henry, PhD @DrJustFutures]

A hilarious explainer for why carbon offsets are, in fact, a ridiculous form of greenwashing.