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Tagged With: wildlife

Is panda PR a good idea?

by Rebecca Nesbit, Press Officer, Society of Biology Panda conservation is not ‘greenwash’ read the headline of BBC Nature’s thought-provoking write-up of the Biology Week debate ‘should we save the panda’. This referred to the evening’s extensive discussion about the use (and misuse) of pandas in conservation PR. Whether or not you think it is … Continue reading »

Categories: Biology Week, Nature | Tags: , , , , , , | 2 Comments

bTB or not bTB? How to control it is still the question

Guest post by Catherine O’Connor, Epidemiologist for the Health Protection Services, discussing the badger cull As an epidemiologist, my job is to understand the how, what, when, where and whys of disease transmission. Though we now possess much fancier tools than those used by the father of epidemiology, John Snow (he of the Broad Street … Continue reading »

Categories: Latest research, Nature | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

Bumblebees’ gruesome parasites

Guest blog by Sive Finlay, a PhD student from Trinity College Dublin who recently won Best Biology Student at the 2012 SET awards for her undergraduate project Bee populations are in severe decline, an alarming and worrying trend when you consider their vital importance as commercial and ecological pollinators. Research and media attention often focuses … Continue reading »

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An American crayfish in London (and beyond!)

by Zara Gladman, PhD student at the University of Glasgow and intern at the Society of Biology In my last blog I waxed lyrical on the wonders of crayfish, those large freshwater invertebrates that grace our rivers, lochs and your M&S sandwiches.  Today I’d like to discuss one of the biggest threats to aquatic biodiversity: … Continue reading »

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Species of the week: the crayfish

by Zara Gladman, intern at the Society of Biology My name is Zara and I’m an “astacologist”, which is a fancy way of saying that I study crayfish, lobster-like freshwater crustaceans of which there are more than 640 described species.  In Australia, they go by the name of “yabby” (as in “Yabby Creek” – Home … Continue reading »

Categories: Nature, Species of the week | Tags: , , | 7 Comments

Flying ant facts

Rebecca Nesbit, Society of Biology Submit your flying ant sightings! We have had an overwhelming response to our flying ant survey and some very interesting questions about flying ants. So I thought I’d bring them all together, along with a couple of videos of ‘my’ flying ant colonies in Hertfordshire. You can also read about … Continue reading »

Categories: Royal Society of Biology | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Bring biology to life with ARKive

Guest blog by Lauren Pascoe from Wildscreen Whether you want to explore the wonders of the natural or are in need of some inspiration for this years’ Society of Biology photography competition, ARKive has it covered. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to inspire the global community to discover, … Continue reading »

Categories: Photography | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Olympic Bat Hunt

No, it’s not some cruel new sport for London 2012. This is Bats in Space, a collaboration between the artist Jeremy Deller and the Bat Conservation Trust. The project takes small groups around East London’s Olympic park at dusk, with bat detectors and adapted mobiles phones to make the high frequency bat calls audible and … Continue reading »

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Species of the week: the black garden ant

To coincide with the launch of our flying ant survey, Christina Catlin-Groves from the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust has written a guest blog with little-known facts about these well-known ants. Also known as the pavement ant, the black garden ant (Lasius niger) is the most common ant seen in towns and gardens. They nest almost anywhere, … Continue reading »

Categories: Royal Society of Biology, Species of the week | Tags: , , , , , , | 7 Comments