In defense of flies! Some of us know that no defense is needed, but for everyone else, Emily Hartop from MfN Berlin and Erica McAlister from NHM London set the record straight. Dr Erica McAlister; @mfnberlin; Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery vox.com/down-to-earth/…

ONTbarcoder 2.0: Real-time DNA barcoding with MinION´s R10.4. Now you can find out what species are in your sample, while you are still sequencing. Get more and better barcodes faster than ever. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Dark Taxonomy II: From unknown to ready for biomonitoring in 5 steps. More on why describing 120 species of fungus gnats really matters. Bees, butterflies and birds, make room for your new friends tinyurl.com/42862af3 Florian Leese Roderic Page Donat Agosti Caterino Arthropod Biodiversity Lab @LawlessKahlil

Introducing the Entomoscope! 🦟🔬 DIY microscope for getting detailed images of tiny insects in ethanol. Do this: 1️⃣ 3D-print the case 2️⃣ Order parts online 3️⃣ Assemble 4️⃣ Begin imaging! 📸Perfect for entomologists keen on training AI! tinyurl.com/bdh86krz #DIYMicroscopy🐜

Out now: Real-time DNA barcoding with MinION! DNA barcoding isn't only for fancy labs - you can now discover global biodiversity in your kitchen while frying an egg (almost)! Reminds us of Dorothy Parker´s "Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye" tinyurl.com/2fx5pzak

Now published: DIY microscope🔬 for insects of all sizes, even those preserved in ethanol! Designed for developing holistic biomonitoring with AI tools. Most animal species and much of animal biomass are arthropods. They need frugal identification methods! ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10401…

Congrats to PhD student Lorenz Wührl for publishing one of the Top Cited Paper in Mol. Ecol. Res. for 2022-23. He developed the DiversityScanner for sorting and imaging insects. See the robot in action here: youtu.be/ElJ5VSHa4OI. Download publication: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

#𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽 "𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐍𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠" 𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐝! Registration for #HennigMeeting2024 is FREE for attendees of any of the available courses!🤯 #NanoporeSequencing #SpeciesDiscovery #IntegrativeTaxonomy

Dark Taxon Science: In a tale of two realities, we here try to foster an epoch of biodiversity enlightenment while being threatened by the shadows of mass extinction: megabarcoding shows that two dark taxa in the Baihua Mountains behave very differently! doi.org/10.1101/2024.0…

Looking forward to our event at the Botschaft der Schweiz in Deutschland to celebrate CERN 79th anniversary, illustrating #openscience, #biodiversity, plazi @mfnberlin Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery Zenodo and #kit collaboration

🚨 EntoSieve: New automated tool for fast, accurate size-sorting of bulk insect samples! Perfect for boosting DNA megabarcoding & metabarcoding projects. 🧬🔬 DIY low-cost device, gentle on specimens and yet efficient 🦋🐞read here: authorea.com/users/836612/a…

⚠️#NewPaperAlert 🦋 𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐟 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐝: Integrative Taxonomy Reveals 32 New Species and a High Cryptic Diversity in the Scopariinae and Crambinae of the Philippines (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) By @TheoLeger1989 shorturl.at/5w9gy

⚠️#𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗔𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘁🧬 #HennigMeeting2025 workshop in #HongKong next July! High-throughput Species Discovery Using Nanopore Sequencing: from Specimens to Species in a Few Days By: Rudolf Meier @rudolf-meier.bsky.soci, Amrita Srivathsan @asrivathsan.bsky.social, Vivian Feng from Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery cladistics.org/xlii-annual-me…

Dark Taxonomy: From unknown to ready for biomonitoring in 5 steps. By describing 120 species, most species of fungus gnats routinely caught in Singaporean Malaise traps now have names. Bees, butterflies and birds, make room for your new friends. Read here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cl…

Species- versus specimen-level congruence between DNA barcodes and morphology. Species-level dominates papers but specimen-level matters more for sample evaluation. Read more in "Illuminating Entomological Dark Matter with DNA Barcodes..." in Ann Rev Ent: annualreviews.org/content/journa…

UITOTO for taxonomy. Get your molecular diagnoses right without coding or breaking a sweat! Use state-specific, contrastive DMCs instead of fuzzy consensus barcodes! 🪰🦋🪱🦎🦀🐌🦉 doi.org/10.1101/2025.0…

⚠️ #WorkshopUpdate 🧬 Spots still available for our #HennigMeeting2025 workshop in #HongKong 🇭🇰this July! High-throughput Species Discovery Using Nanopore Sequencing Instructors: Amrita Srivathsan @asrivathsan.bsky.social, Rudolf Meier @rudolf-meier.bsky.soci, & Vivian Feng + Info: cladistics.org

🚫 Farewell to species descriptions with consensus barcodes ✨ Hello to Diagnostic Molecular Combinations (DMCs) ✅ State-specific ✅ Contrastive ✅Publication-ready Now even easier with the latest UITOTO, our updated user-friendly software; Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025.0…

⚠️#NewPaperAlert🦀 A new morphological phylogeny of Malacostraca comparing the application of character dependencies and implied weighting. By Grams et al. doi.org/10.1111/cla.12… #Cladistics #Phylogenetics #Morphology #ImpliedWeights #CharacterDependency #Malacostraca

The top 10 flying insect clades rule the skies—but defy the rules. Weak or inverted latitudinal diversity gradients leave biogeographers puzzled. Entomologists? Mildly amused. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…