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Reposted by Sarah Arnold

Prof Chris Jackson @seismatters.bsky.social · 6d

The impact of PhD studies on mental health - A longitudinal population study

PhDs can be and some would likely argue, should be hard.

But surely not *this* hard?

#AcademicSky

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The impact of PhD studies on mental health—a longitudinal population study

Recent self-reported and cross-sectional survey evidence documents high levels of mental health problems among PhD students. We study the relationship…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · 12d

Oh wow. I didn't know they did a 3rd generation, but I guess where the forage is still there, the weather is still manageable. I did see a male flavipes at the end of September that was in OK condition so maybe that was one too. We've got a B. pascuorum queen that is fresh and collecting pollen...

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · 12d

Alt-text for images: A smiling and happy group of people (student, supervisors, examiners) in two different rooms, lined up posing for the camera with the successful student in the centre.

Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · 12d

Really proud of Cedric. It's been a fantastic project, piloting some super cool novel methods in #PollinationEcology and providing new insights into crop #pollination in legume systems. Cedric worked incredibly hard collecting all the data.

Thanks also to Angela Mkindi at NM-AIST in Tanzania!

Phil Stevenson @philstevenson.bsky.social · 13d

Congratulations to our PhD student Dr Cedric Maforimbo on successfully passing his PhD viva today. Thx especially to @evoeco.bsky.social who was the external & to Steve Belmain the UoG examiner & @sejarnold.bsky.social who was my co-supervisor along with #steveharte. We are all really proud of you!

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · 16d

I think it's going to be one of those autumns of many, many ladybirds. Seeing multiple reports of this sort of thing today, and enjoyed watching them all flying around in the sun outside work as well.

Jeremy Bartlett @jeremybartlett.bsky.social · 16d

Lots of Harlequin Ladybirds, Harmonia axyridis, at Bodney church Norfolk, this afternoon.

These were inside the church but there were masses outside too.

#Ladybirds

Lots of Harlequin Ladybirds, Harmonia axyridis, inside a church.

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · 16d

They do seem to have suddenly all decided to congregate and look for somewhere to settle. After noticing them all over my office window I popped out and found many, many individuals all over the sunny, south-facing walls of the building. (Kent) I'm sure I've seen similar reports from elsewhere too.

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Reposted by Sarah Arnold

Emily May @emtomology.bsky.social · Sep 12

Exciting new meta-analysis: compared to calendar spraying, threshold-based management cuts insecticide use by 44% and costs by 40% without reducing yields, and supports more beneficial insects. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Threshold-based management reduces insecticide use by 44% without compromising pest control or crop yield - Communications Earth & Environment

Pest control programs using pest density thresholds cut insecticide uses by 44% and costs by 40%, while maintaining yield and pest suppression, and enhancing beneficial insect populations, as revealed...

www.nature.com

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Sep 5

I agree! Maybe the research community could do something like develop and share some hypothetical case studies of how a conservation project could look different if relevant researchers were involved...?

Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Sep 5

... Or because practitioners have specific experience-based knowledge of what works/what doesn't in that type of environment that they consider trumps theoreticals?

Not sure and probably depends on scale as well (e.g. 0.3ha LWS/field edge v 400 square miles of forest!).

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Sep 5

Or because they once tried and the cost of including researchers blew the budget apart? Or they once tried but bringing in a research org as a partner created a layer of admin complexity that delayed the project too much? ...

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Sep 4

Was there discussion over how to widen the community involved in review? Summer is a challenge, but not all countries have "summer", and not at the same time. Are researchers from Africa, Asia, Latin America getting same opportunities to be involved in peer review? (Do y'all want to?)

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Sep 4

Interesting new paper discussing fieldwork risk assessments and policies in UK HE (but which has some good ideas that other orgs could also incorporate) and how to make fieldwork safer, more inclusive and consider individual needs/intersectionality/etc. #Fieldwork #RiskAssessment

DrZP @zarahpattison.bsky.social · Sep 4

🏞️𝐅𝐢𝐞𝐥𝐝𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡?
Our new study looked at fieldwork policies and risk assessments from 90 UK universities offering environmental science courses.
The results are eye-opening:
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Improving university policies and risk assessment to support inclusive fieldwork in environmental sciences

Among 90 UK higher education institutions, there was patchy mention of protected and other identity-related characteristics in fieldwork policy and risk assessments, and very limited consideration of....

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Sep 4

Yes. Some of the males the queens produce are genetically entirely the different species, but the queens can also produce same-species male offspring via the "normal" routes. We know there are 2 species of males produced because morphologically they are different, & their genomes are very distinct.

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Sep 4

...It doesn't feel like one of those ring species that exist in a continuum with species A at one end, species B at the other, and lots of individuals that are a bit in-between. These are distinct and discrete species.

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Sep 4

The fact that the two ant species diverged basically millions of years ago implies they they ought to be really different. So the fact that a queen ant can lay eggs which hatch out as males of a totally different, separate species is not really like anything that's "supposed" to happen...

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Sep 3

True! I think I love it even more when fairly common species do the fun, whacky stuff right under our noses. (Milder example: I *still* feel delight when I remember that common "solitary" bees like Lasioglossum morio are just quietly being primitively eusocial on the edge of strawberry farms!)

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Sep 3

Wow. That is...quite weird and wonderful. (And now I have shared this paper to basically everyone I know who is even remotely interested in insect biology. Or evolution.)

Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Sep 3

My mind has just been blown and everything you thought you knew about biology is a lie... Seriously, this is one of the coolest "now rethink everything" type papers I've encountered in a while.

Craig Kaplan @triggerloop.bsky.social · Sep 3

Look at this crazy thing!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature

In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

www.nature.com

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Aug 30

DesignShedCymru does some brilliant stuff.

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Reposted by Sarah Arnold

Kent Field Club @kentfieldclub.bsky.social · Aug 29

Not long now till the 2025 Kent Wildlife Conference! This year's themes are urban biodiversity and citizen science - check out the impressive list of speakers here -
www.kentfieldclub.org.uk/programme/up...

Also - tickets only £22 including refreshments and lunch! So why not book your place today?

Kent Wildlife Conference

Saturday 25th October Kent Wildlife Conference 10am to 4pm. At the Darwin Conference Suite, Darwin College, University of Kent. Register by scrolling down and clicking the 'Register' button. Or...

www.kentfieldclub.org.uk

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Reposted by Sarah Arnold

Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · Aug 15

An abbreviation (ABB) in a journal article (JA) or Grant Application (GA) is rarely worth the words it saves. Every ABB requires cognitive resources (CR) and at my age by the time I'm halfway through a JA or GA I no longer have the CR to remember what your ABB stood for.

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Aug 14

I totally don't have internal training materials that are written a bit like that for new techs. Definitely not...

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Aug 12

"flowers were pollinated daily by shaking plant canopies and flicking individual flowers by hand" - is this feasible at scale? I wonder if/how the light setup impacts managed insect pollinators if using them?

Reposted by Sarah Arnold

Abigail Lowe @abigaillowe.bsky.social · Aug 7

Do you do moth trapping in the UK? We'd love your help! 💡

At @ukceh.bsky.social we're training & testing AI to detect multiple moths in a single image.

Send us top-down photos of multiple moths on egg trays to support this work.

More info & form: forms.gle/e3HzBPEd7RVV...

#mothsmatter #TeamMoth

A top-down image of 12 various moths on a green egg carton.

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Sarah Arnold @sejarnold.bsky.social · Aug 3

Sorry! Forgot alt-text. Alt-text = Close-up images of a small (<5mm) long mostly-black beetle in a glass tube, in a human hand. The beetle has red-brown legs, as well as red head and thorax.

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