Alicja Witwicka
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aswitwicka.bsky.social
Alicja Witwicka
@aswitwicka.bsky.social
260 followers 180 following 9 posts
Researcher | BIOSCAN, Tree of Life, Sanger Institute
👩🏻‍💻🧬🌱🐝🦋🪲🪰🌍
#Entomology #Genomics #Biomonitoring #Pollinators #Pesticides #Conservation #SciencePolicy she/her
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
josephtobias.bsky.social
PhD up for grabs in applied ecology focusing on species traits and ecological processes, supervised by @jmbecologist.bsky.social @orlyrazgour.bsky.social, Ben Woodcock, and me.
Worth a look!
jmbecologist.bsky.social James Bullock @jmbecologist.bsky.social · 2d
PhD opportunity!

Focusing on ecological processes offers an adaptive approach to conservation at a time of rapid environmental change

But how do we measure & conserve these processes?

This PhD will explore the use of species traits to assess ecosystem condition
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
www.findaphd.com
November 18, 2025 at 9:21 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
entopoc.bsky.social
Are you a POC student, early career researcher, or professional entomologist from a country in the Global South?

We are now funding memberships!
Apply from October 1st to December 15th.

More info:
www.entopoc.org/apply.html
Apply:
docs.google.com/.../1FAIpQLS...
October 1, 2025 at 10:18 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
jimfouracre.bsky.social
PhD opportunity in plant developmental biology for UK based students of Black heritage!

How do they know when to grow up? Join us at the University of Bristol to find out.

Application deadline Jan 6th

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

#PlantSciencePhDs @blackinplantsci.bsky.social
November 7, 2025 at 10:37 AM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
philstevenson.bsky.social
I have a PhD opportunity with @juliakoricheva.bsky.social at @rhulbiology.bsky.social and @rbgkew.bsky.social to research the effect of forest diversification on understory forage provision for pollinators in an experimental mixed forest in Finland. www.trees-dla.ac.uk/projects/eff... please share
Effects of forest diversification on floral reward production for pollinators | TREES DLA
The herb layer in forests has a large potential to provide nectar and pollen for pollinators, but forest management practices such as planting tree species mixtures vs monocultures can affect floral r...
www.trees-dla.ac.uk
October 28, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
petrathepostdoc.bsky.social
Day 26 #Invertober2025 - Sea bunny (Jorunna parva) 🐰

#SciArt #invertebrates
semi-relistic drawing of two sea bunnies, sea slugs with white and yello bodies covered in little black dots, with big black ear like structures and fuzzy tails, on a black background. semi-relistic drawing of two sea bunnies, sea slugs with white and yello bodies covered in little black dots, with big black ear like structures and fuzzy tails, on a white background.
October 26, 2025 at 10:16 AM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
alexwild.bsky.social
Friday Flyday! A mating pair of big-headed flies, Pipunculidae, photographed in Texas.
Macro photograph of two mating flies in side view, the smaller one underneath and perched on a brown twig, against a smooth dark green background. The flys' heads are large, rounded, and made almost entirely out of giant, encompassing rusty red compound eyes.
October 17, 2025 at 6:45 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
jackdashby.bsky.social
Sometimes a #wombat's eyes light up and they move with a sudden sense of purpose, to nowhere in particular.
#WombatWednesday #Tasmania #MammalWatching #WildOz #wombats
October 1, 2025 at 6:27 AM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
psavary.bsky.social
Happy to announce an open post-doctoral position (24 months) in the ThéMA lab (Besançon, CNRS-Univ.Marie et Louis Pasteur) to work on the coupled modelling of population genetic structure and metacommunity dynamics in habitat networks. Details here: shorturl.at/7muyx
For any questions, contact me!
September 29, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
profbillmcguire.bsky.social
"Today, we clear a soccer field’s worth of tropical forest every six seconds, a loss dramatically worsened by humanity’s growing hunger for meat"

Wean ourselves off meat now, or the switch to a Pliocene climate that's locked in will do it for us

www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Meat is a leading emissions source – but few outlets report on it, analysis finds
Sentient Media reveals less than 4% of climate news stories mention animal agriculture as source of carbon emissions
www.theguardian.com
September 27, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
corriemoreau.bsky.social
UPDATE: The 2025-2026 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resources! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
ecoevojobs.net 2025-26
docs.google.com
September 19, 2025 at 9:47 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
samyeaman.bsky.social
I'm looking to recruit a PhD student to study patterns of local adaptation and introgression across the spruce hybrid zone in the Rockies near Calgary. Projects can include field work, bioinformatics, pop gen theory, or comparison to plant/ conifer species
yeamanlab.weebly.com/uploads/5/7/...
August 20, 2025 at 8:19 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
paneurope.bsky.social
1/3 🧵🐞
A 2025 meta-analysis of 1,705 studies confirms that #pesticides are widely toxic to many non-target organisms. @davegoulson.bsky.social
www.pan-europe.info/blog/pestici...
Pesticides found widely toxic to non-target organisms in low concentrations
A 2025 meta-analysis of 1,705 studies confirms that pesticides are widely toxic to many non-target organisms. “Pesticides affect a diverse range of non-target species and may be linked to global biodi...
www.pan-europe.info
September 18, 2025 at 10:05 AM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
natecoevo.nature.com
Measuring selection and dominance in fitness of the insecticide-resistant Ace alleles in Drosophila melanogaster, the authors show evidence for beneficial reversal of dominance, a mechanism that can stabilize large-effect polymorphisms in nature. 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Beneficial reversal of dominance maintains a large-effect resistance polymorphism under fluctuating insecticide selection - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Measuring selection and dominance in fitness of the insecticide-resistant Ace alleles in Drosophila melanogaster, the authors show evidence for beneficial reversal of dominance, a mechanism that can s...
www.nature.com
September 18, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
iussi-nwes.bsky.social
We are delighted that our Winter Meeting 2025 in Leuven 🇧🇪 is approaching!

Abstract submissions now open: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings

Date: December 18-19
Abstract deadline: October 15
Host: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution at KU Leuven
Plenary: Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
September 13, 2025 at 7:22 AM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
nature.com
A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species

go.nature.com/4mOb5T9
‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother
Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.
go.nature.com
September 3, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
rayanchikhi.bsky.social
🌎👩‍🔬 For 15+ years biology has accumulated petabytes (million gigabytes) of🧬DNA sequencing data🧬 from the far reaches of our planet.🦠🍄🌵

Logan now democratizes efficient access to the world’s most comprehensive genetics dataset. Free and open.

doi.org/10.1101/2024...
September 3, 2025 at 8:39 AM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
waspwoman.bsky.social
We are 3 records short of 400!!
Please submit your picnic wasp food observations!
More info on how and why here: theconversation.com/what-to-do-w...

@theconversation.com
August 23, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
peiferlabunc.bsky.social
The community of Drosophila researchers is amazing, mutually supportive and collaborative. Right now a key resource for our community, @flybase.bsky.social , is threatened by the cancellation of its NIH grant and is seeking community help in raising short term funds 1/n 🧪 please share
Dear Fly Community, In May 2025, the NIH terminated all grant funding to Harvard University, including the NHGRI grant that supported FlyBase. This grant also funded FlyBase teams at Indiana University (IU) and the University of Cambridge (UK), and as a result, their subawards were also canceled. The Cambridge team has secured support for one to two years through generous donations from the European fly community, emergency funding from the Wellcome Trust, and support from the University of Cambridge. At IU, funding has been secured for one year thanks to reserve funds from Thom Kaufman and a supplement from ORIP/NIH to the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC). Unfortunately, the situation at Harvard is far more critical. Harvard University had supported FlyBase staff since May but recently denied a request for extended bridge funding. As a result, all eight employees (four full-time and four part-time) were abruptly laid off, with termination dates ranging from August to mid-October depending on their positions. In addition, our curator at the University of New Mexico will leave her position at the end of August. This decision came as a shock, and we are urgently pursuing all possible funding options. To put the need into perspective: although FlyBase is free to use, it is not free to make. It takes large teams of people and millions of dollars a year to create FlyBase to support fly research (the last NHGRI grant supported us with more than 2 million USD per annum). To help sustain FlyBase operations, we have been reaching out to you to ask for your support. We have set up a donation site in Cambridge, UK, to which European labs have and can continue to contribute, and a new donation site at IU to which labs in the US and the rest of the world can contribute. We urge researchers to work with their grant administrators to contribute to FlyBase via these sites if at all possible, as more of the money will go to FlyBase. However, we appreciate that some fu… https://wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase:Contribute_to_FlyBase Our immediate goals are: 1. To maintain core curation activities and keep the FlyBase website online 2. To complete integration with the Alliance of Genome Resources (The Alliance). Integration with the Alliance is essential for FlyBase’s long-term sustainability. For nearly a decade, NHGRI/NIH has supported the unification of Model Organism Databases (MODs) into the Alliance, which we aim to achieve by 2028. Therefore, securing bridge funding to sustain FlyBase over the next three years is crucial for successful integration and the long-term access to FlyBase data. At present, our remaining funds will allow us to keep the FlyBase website online for approximately one more year. Beyond that, its future is uncertain unless new funding is secured. We will, of course, continue pursuing additional grant opportunities as they arise. Given the uncertainty of future NIH or alternative funding sources, we are relying on the Fly community for support. Your contributions will directly help us retain the staff needed to complete this transition and to secure ongoing fly data curation into the Alliance beyond 2028. We at FlyBase are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support from the community during this challenging time. Your encouragement has strengthened our resolve and underscores how vital this resource remains to Drosophila research worldwide. Sincerely, The FlyBase Team
August 23, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
climate-adaptation.bsky.social
Goodbye #eseb2025 @eseb2025.bsky.social see you next time!

Perhaps what stuck most was powerful talk on resilience and survival by Palestinian researcher, play director, and ESEB EUEA awardee May Shehady. Let's not forget, let's not look away. 🇵🇸
August 23, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
naturalselection.bsky.social
*PhD position* 🦉

Would you like to do a PhD with Indo-Pacific birds and evolutionary genomics? Join us in Stockholm:


05 September 2025, 23:59

PhD student in Evolution of Indo-Pacific birds
recruit.visma.com/spa/public/a...
PhD student in Evolution of Indo-Pacific birds
The Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics is offering a four-year PhD position focused on analyzing population-level genomic data from museum bird samples. The project will employ cutting-edge gen...
recruit.visma.com
August 10, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
joyousjoyness.com
✨ A Sprinkle of JoyousJoyness ✨

MLEM!

Have a JoyousJoyfulJoyness day!

#happy #cat #mlem #cute #joyousjoyness #funny
Close up photo of a tuxedo cat licking the camera with a fish eye lens.
August 1, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
davegoulson.bsky.social
New research from Pesticide Action Network reveals the extent of pesticide use by UK councils. These are poisons being sprayed in your street, your local park. Pls share.

For links to the full report & to find out what you can do, follow the link below
www.pan-uk.org/pesticide-fr...
July 30, 2025 at 8:31 AM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
titsay.bsky.social
they are tired of being busy bees
July 25, 2025 at 12:32 PM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
waspwoman.bsky.social
If you have a BBQ visitor this wknd, don’t flap and shout.
Instead, give a wasp-offering: sausage..pie.. whatever she wants. She’s looking for protein not sugar atm as the colony is growing fast with many brood to feed.
Wasps are pest controllers, pollinators- Live with not against them. #WaspLove
July 12, 2025 at 8:08 AM
Reposted by Alicja Witwicka
svbelleghem.bsky.social
Excited to advertise a shared PhD position at KU Leuven (Belgium) and Mondsee (Austria) with @markusmoest.bsky.social on the genetic basis, plasticity and evolution of melanization in Daphnia from alpine lakes. Apply here: www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...
July 7, 2025 at 3:30 PM