It’s been scorching hot here in Germany for so long many of the plants and even trees are dead/dying. 🥵🔥 It’s getting hard to find any butterflies, but I am still finding moths, like this lovely Silver Y (Autographa gamma), a long distant migrant from southern Europe/Africa

Catch of the day!! An absolutely gorgeous Queen of Spain fritillary (Issoria lathonia), caught with the help of our student intern in an extensively managed urban park

Last night we hosted Moth Night; we showcased different moth trapping methods, looked at moths beneath the microscope, and played some moth themed games! We highlighted their diversity, ecological importance, and conservation. 🌙 Thank you to everyone who took part!

Woke up to an elephant hawk moth (Deilephila elpenor) on the toaster, must’ve been after some breakfast 🍞🍳🥓

I’ve had some interesting insect finds this week while out hunting for butterflies, including this dazzling light crimson underwing moth (Catocala promissa) that generously showed off its bright red hindwings as for just a moment before flying off 😍

Delighted to share that our paper that showed how historic records kept by hobby entomologists can be used to investigate long-term change was Highly Commended by the Royal Entomology Society Journal Awards 🥰📚📜 you can find our paper here: doi.org/10.1111/icad... www.royensoc.co.uk/news/res-jou...

The forest has been a great place to work on these hot days, lots of insects flying (and unfortunately biting 🪰🦟)! Plenty of white admirals fluttering about at the moment🌳🦋

Had a great (but very hot) weekend on the Fauna Excursion, collecting and identifying insects in grasslands and forest. The forest day in particular was great, we caught both a purple emperor and a lesser purple emperor, and lots of white-letter hairstreaks! 🦋🦋🦋🌳

Germany is currently experiencing a pretty brutal heatwave 🥵🔥 bad for me, but the butterflies so far are loving it! Very high numbers of Essex skipper (Thymelicus lineola) and marbled white (Melanargia galathea) on campus at the moment! 🦋🦋🦋

On our Evolutionary Ecology course today, we had the pleasure of meeting Pinu, a dog trained to sniff out scarce fritillary (Euphydryas maturna) caterpillars to improve their monitoring! 🐛🦋 Great job Pinu and his dedicated owner Ádám Kőrösi!

Come along today at 2:30 to hear me talk about butterflies in the Alps, and what they can tell us about how butterflies respond to climate change 🏔️🦋☀️ #SOTM2026 @sotm2026.bsky.social

Super excited for the start of the #SOTM2026 conference tomorrow!! 🌎🌱🦋 What an incredible location at sun moon lake in Taiwan 🤩 Come along on Thursday at 2:30 to hear me talk about how montane butterflies respond to temperature change 🦋☀️ @sotm2026.bsky.social

Thank you to Knauf for their support of the project, and allowing us to use two of their renaturated quarries as study sites. Also shoutout to the curious highland cattle that oversaw our work

Today we set up two insect monitoring stations in the glorious sunshine as part of a Masters thesis project. We will be comparing this with traditional monitoring to improve our understanding of the role of AI to supplement and enhance insect monitoring 🐝🪰🦋💚 @globalchangeeco.bsky.social

Already the last day of #TIBS2026, starting with the fascinating links between biogeography, culture, and language @biogeography.bsky.social

Thank you to those who spoke with me at my poster yesterday! The poster is still up for the rest of the #TIBS2026 conference so please come find me or email me if you want to chat

Wonderful opening to the #TIBS2026, including an inspiring talk from Mark Lomolino who shared his thoughts on the future of biogeography 🌍🌎🌏 @biogeography.bsky.social

Cool critter of the day! 🧐 These are the same moth species, one male one female! There are quite a few amazing moth species active around this time of year where the females don’t bother growing wings (why waste the energy?) and look like completely different insects!! 🤩

I’ve had a wonderful week infiltrating the ranks of meteorologists! I’m always excited to share my own research, and I’ve learnt a lot about climatology, a subject with so much collaborative potential with ecology 🌦️🌱🦋🌍

I’m very excited to be sharing some of my work on quantifying microclimates and their performance during heatwaves at this years European Meteorological Society conference! I’m very much outside my comfort zone and looking forward to learning lots about climatology across scales 🕵️‍♀️🌍🔍

One of the stars of the last few weeks has been the lovely water ringlet (Erebia pronoe), who have stunning markings and vivid colours when fresh. 🤩 They’re quite friendly really, if you don’t mind the tickling!

And that’s a wrap! Today I finished my butterfly sampling in the Alps, with a final visit to my highest elevation site (and probably my favourite). I caught my 606th butterfly of the month, and it’s time to head home 🦋🗻

Today’s catch of the day was also the catch of the week, a stunning swallowtail (Papilio machaon)! 🤩 A beautiful species, and very obliging to let me take some photos while it nectared 🌸🦋☀️

After a few days of rain, we managed to get two dry days to complete our site surveys! Today was a beautiful bright day with a cold wind, air temperatures have dropped 10C in a week! It seems the summer field season is coming to a close, and we were just in time! 🦋🗻

After a rainy few days we’re been back in the field! After a slobbery encounter with some cows, we had a good day sampling. The encounter of the day was this stunning spurge hawk-moth larva (Hyles euphorbiae) 🐛 it was huge, the size of a finger!!

Another scorching day in the mountains! Today’s site was overflowing with Scotch argus (Erebia aethiops), even watched a few laying their eggs carefully on grass stems. Few other species around, but at least this one is flourishing here

Today was one of the hottest days we’ve gone out sampling, reaching nearly 30C here in the mountains ☀️🔥 Many butterflies seemed to be hugging the shade today. One of my students spotted this lovely garden tiger moth (Arctia caja) similarly hiding in the shadows

Another sunny day at our highest elevation plot! Some nice finds today, lots of yellow-spotted ringlets (Erebia manto), and my first ever mountain clouded yellows (Colias phicomone) (sadly no good photos)! So many species out flying, it’s always a pleasure to visit (…except for the climb)

Another day out sampling butterflies! Many silver-spotted skippers (Hesperia comma) buzzing about, they’re in good numbers here! Otherwise had the pleasure of sharing a peaceful moment with this painted lady (Vanessa cardui), who seemed reluctant to leave after I interrupted their nectaring 🌸🦋

Another sunny day out sampling butterflies in the Alps! Today we came across a site rich in silver-spotted skippers (Hesperia comma), but in the heat of the sun they were incredibly fast and restless, very hard to catch! 🦋💨☀️ luckily Erebia rarely seem to be in a hurry, so the sampling was still good