Five years back in Berlin #4c: Too many species, too little time Step 3: 3D imaging. KIT colleagues built 2 tools for us: the Levitator makes dead insects fly; DS-360° images wet specimens from all sides. Levitator www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi... DS-360° ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/doc...

Five years back in Berlin and 10 years of nanopore barcoding for everyone, everywhere. From ~10% read errors to live barcoding on a laptop. Now with additional use of DNA barcodes to turn images into AI training data for small insects. Too many species and too little time. doi.org/10.1111/cla....

Thanks to my coal-burning, beef-eating friends! We mantids reached Berlin only in the 1990. Warm summers and disused railway lines really helped. Denmark, Sweden, and Lithuania were easy; looking at Norway now. Some species debate climate change. We just follow it. tinyurl.com/ynpjz48d

Five years back in Berlin #4a: Finding the small and mighty Most species are <5 mm. But small ≠ unimportant: ants outweigh all wild birds + mammals and spiders eat as much prey as humans meat/fish: ~400–800 Mt per /lyear. Meet EntoSieve for size sorting onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Five years back in Berlin #4: Too many species, too little time. ~90% of species remain unknown. So we need methods that scale: robotics, nanopore barcodes & AI. The four DiversityScanners in the video image, measure, classify and sort insects, freeing taxonomists to focus on discovery.

Five years back in Berlin, and >650 species new to science. From crop-disease vectors to soil predators, CIBD researchers are bringing biology’s “dark matter” into the light—naming species so we can study, monitor and protect them. Explore: lnkd.in/e_uiKJwb

Global insect diversity may comprise 14–20 million species, with roughly 90% still unnamed. Even in Germany 2/3rd of species detected with metabarcoding cannot be matched to names. CIBD connects DNA, specimens, images to names so that detected biodiversity becomes interpretable knowledge.

Five years ago this month, after 19 years in Singapore, I moved back to Berlin. The photo shows me with my advisor, Professor Walter Sudhaus, at what is now my workplace: the Museum für Naturkunde, which stood behind the Wall when I studied in West Berlin. Life has a taste for unlikely plots.

Halloween News: Meet a new vampire fly (Hippoboscidae) 🧛‍♂🪰 1 of 10 species found on citizen-reported bird carcasses in Singapore: Even dead birds can have productive afterlives! See host records, annotated images, pictorial keys & DNA diagnostics here: doi.org/10.1155/jzs/...

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. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚫 Farewell to species descriptions with consensus barcodes. ✨ Hello to Diagnostic Molecular Combinations (DMCs) for your taxonomic research ✅ State-specific ✅ Contrastive ✅ Publication-ready Now even easier with the latest UITOTO, our updated user-friendly software; Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

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...

🚨 EntoSieve is now published in Molecular Ecology Resources: Fast and accurate size-sorting of bulk insect samples! Perfect for boosting DNA megabarcoding & metabarcoding projects. 🧬🔬 DIY low-cost device, gentle on specimens and yet efficient 🦋🐞 here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

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: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

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

Malaise Trap Polka Dots vs. Biodiversity Smudge: Similar latitudinal data deficiency gradients for DNA barcodes and all data. Read more in "Illuminating Entomological Dark Matter with DNA Barcodes in an Era of Insect Decline, Deep Learning, and Genomics" Ann. Rev. Entomol.: doi.org/10.1146/annu...

"Illuminating Entomological Dark Matter with DNA Barcodes in an Era of Insect Decline, Deep Learning, and Genomics" Who uses insect DNA barcodes for which taxa? The usual suspects dominate... Now in Annual Review of Entomology: doi.org/10.1146/annu...

Episode 3 (imaging): Don't just sort. Also image, from multiple perspectives! Insect levitation with ultrasound: capturing 360° views to automate measurements and create 3D models. More here: www.techrxiv.org/users/813834...