I am a scientist working on the taxonomy of fungi and bacteria in New Zealand. Definitely a niche job! As an example of what I do, I described and named the organism causing Kauri dieback: Phytophthora agathidicida.
I also run the ICMP national culture collection of 23,000 cryo-frozen strains of microorganisms.
I'll toot science stuff mosty, or on whatever my latest hobby is!
I'm not a photographer but I'm keen on #insects so thought I'd contribute to #WeevilWednesday (photo credit @bevan )
A mango seed weevil (Sternochetus mangiferae) we found inside fruit imported from Australia to NZ (and yes #NZTwits , we did catch it and report to MPI).
If any #NZTwits or Australian friends aren’t already doing Flu Tracker, this is a great community service you can do to help track the spread of flu. Answer a simple weekly survey sent by email- it takes less than a minute! They are looking for more participants. https://info.flutracking.net/
I found a "Little log cabin bag moth" crawling on the side of one of our placemats. Not sure how it had managed to get itself inside the house let alone onto our dining table!
Within this little bag structure, made of bark and leaves, is the moth larvae. You can sometimes see their head and front legs, though often they fully retract inside the bag when distrubed.
#insect #moth
Alcoholic drink
I do like the crazy beers. This one is a nitro passionfruit milkshake! Delicious! https://untp.beer/z7PxA
I've done a brief write up of my experience over the last 2 weeks with the influx of sign ups and expansion of mastodon.nz 😃 (I'm by no means a writer/blogger! Just documenting bits and pieces)
🎨 A painting/Fediverse experimentation:
With percentages of Red, Green and Blue, you can obtain a precise RGB color definition.
So, please vote for one or more color channel and with the mix of all the votes, I'll challenge myself to paint a fantasy landscape, using the result as the dominant color.
(PS: I'm doing full time inking/penciling on episode 37 and a bit of colored art cool-down would be great! Also I need a bit of 'Fedifun' this week. Thanks for your votes and boosts! )
@aurynn @Br3nda related to the earlier discussion: NZs bumblebees were imported from the UK to pollinate a crop (maybe lucerne?) that the native insects wouldn’t or couldn’t. When the UK population was almost wiped out they considered reimporting NZ bumbles to repopulate. Unfortunately they found ours to be super inbred so instead they got the same species from Norway.
I started following @aljazeera (unofficial) which apparently is a repeater from the official feed.
#nztwits is there a way we could do this for #RNZ ? I am not savvy with doing things online, but if someone can point me in the right direction, maybe I could have a crack at doing this? (Said with a low level of confidence...)
On right now is the iNaturalist "City Nature Challenge". Cities around the work are competing to record as many species as possible.
Try out the app at https://inaturalist.nz/home and see what you can find! #nature
Today is the start of the City Nature Challenge on https://inaturalist.nz/. Here are my first three observations.
Hey folks! Remember that it's considered good manners on the fediverse to CW pictures of food and selfies. #feditips
Time for my #introduction - kia ora!
I'm a Māori #writer in #NewZealand and I like writing stories for young people.
Right now I'm working on two #film projects and a #YA novel which means I'm in my head more than irl, and I get very forgetful about regular, boring stuff like putting the rubbish out, brushing my hair, and paying bills.
I love:
#zombies
#dystopia
#scifi
#dragons
#aquariums
and wearing masks.
It's nice to be here! 😊
If there are any other old #entomologists on here, who would like to connect, share #insect photos (with a CW), and generally chat buggy stuff, let me know.
My interests lie in #EPG (electrical penetration graph) technique and disease acquisition/transmission. Have previously worked in #pollination and #disinfestation technologies for market access.
12-string #BASS sounds MASSIVE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGMYQEdNhSM&ab_channel=CharlesBerthoud
Research Leader for Biological Databases and Collections at Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research in Aotearoa. Curator of the ICMP culture collection 🦠🍄🧬🧫