Rosy Christopher
Molecular entomology PhD student NCL @ForagingEcology 🕷️🧬 • RES Student rep 🪲 • First gen • She/They • #NeurodivergentinSTEM #PrideinEnto
- So excited for the bees to come back! All the early bulbs are starting, and spring is sooooo close
- We are a go! The student forum will be held at my very own Newcastle University this year, and we've got some cracking talks from some brilliant entomologists lined up for the key note spots, some fab workshops and as always we'll have the ENTOquiz! So please send your abstracts over #entomology
- So excited to be giving this talk in June, be ready for everything commensalisms, crab spiders and community science! 🌼🕷️🧬
- FREE NEW EVENT!!! 🕷️ Join us on Friend, Foe, or Freeloader? The Flower Crab Spider webinar on 2nd June. @envirosyment.bsky.social explores how Misumena vatia hunts on flowers—and how you can get involved in the research too! 🌍 🧪 🔗 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1915221742... @britishspiders.bsky.social
- Not only will you be getting first hand experience in how societies are run behind the scenes but all the connections and opportunities that come will the role are unmatched! @idrisadams.bsky.social and I will be ready to bring you up to speed on everything to do with the position! 🪲🐝🐞
- This was my final straw today, thought I could perfectly consolidate these samples into one box, but my ability to hold it together at the end of this field season is being tested
- So it's been a minute, July was busy! I finished up my Cornwall fieldwork, drove 500 miles back to the north, had some leave, did my night time spider surveys, graduated from my master's in cardiff, had one car die and bought my first car in my own, and then started my candy stripe spider fieldwork
- It's #insectweek !! Here's some of the Flower Crab spiders I've seen this field season, but don't forget to submit your photos to foragingecology.com/spider-spies/
- The awaited day two of field work! Come with me to collect in my community data sample and do some nectar sampling 🕷️🌼 #fieldwork #comewithme #flowers #spiders #entomology #arachnology #phdlife #phdstudent #womeninstem
- What is spider spies? Speaking a bit about the project, what goes into the kits, and what your participation goes towards! Link for the page: foragingecology.com/spider-spies/ #communityscience #arachnology #entomology #womeninstem #research #spiders #networkecology
- This is the kind of Jurassic park I'd be keen for
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- Back in the field this week after some very turbulent weather, the spiders are still kicking though! I've now received records across 8 counties for #spiderspies including records from both England and Wales, this weeks task is learning some programming for a nice interacting map for the website!
- and working out how one records a voiceover for a fieldwork based Tiktok/reel, hey #PhDs are about learning but safe to say I've picked up a lot of skills I wasn't expecting just in the first 9 months
- It's always a joy but the tiniest bit frustrating when I find these guys away from my fieldsite. I spent all afternoon walking fields searching to find one female, and then I'm just walking around my parents farm checking on foals and spot this bright yellow #misumena #arachnology #spider
- Despite the dismal weather down here in Cornwall, I managed to get out to sample this afternoon and found this beauty! This one had the reddest abdomen stripes I've seen yet #spiders #arachnology
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- Today's #fieldwork life lesson was if you're leaving a pan trap in a field of cows 🐮🐄 pin it down because they will steal it
- Of course after posting about seeing them so rarely this morning, I found another yellow morph flower crab #spider today, and she was a stonker 🌟🕷️💛
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- Despite having seen my fair share of these #spiders at this point, I've only found two yellow morph Misumena vatia and they really are gorgeous 🌟💛☀️
- The first sample kits are in the post for #spiderspies and should be on their way to the wonderful people already participating in this scheme! We even got spider themed stamps to get them to you guys 🕷️✉️
- After such a great response to #spiderspies yesterday and so many people sharing it, I've already had 6 responses in just one day, and 3 people have requested sample kits! So I'll be making a trip to the post office this afternoon to get those sent out to people 🕷️✉️ spider mail here we come
- Hi everyone, I am launching a community science scheme "Spider Spies" where we are asking you, to send us pictures and if you're keen and able samples of Misumena vatia, the Flower Crab Spider to investigate their interactions with their host flowers and the invertebrate community around them.
- I have created a guide for identifying them and where to find them, despite their camouflage they are pretty easy to recognise, and they love to sit out on the tops of flowers 🌼
- Now what is the point of all this, by sending us both the photos and the sampled spiders 🕷️ we can start to piece together why Flower crab spiders choose the flowers they do, whether this changes in different areas or habitats, and how this impacts ecosystem services.
- Further information about the scheme can be found here foragingecology.com/spider-spies/ along with links to our recording form. Please feel free to ask me any questions about the scheme, the spiders or the work I'm doing with them!
- A very different kind of visitor to my parents holiday let this morning, I felt very powerful on the fact that I had the perfect telescopic sweep net to gently rescue this unsuspecting swallow from the eves. Who says being an #entomologist doesn't save lives, atleast that of #birds
- I very swiftly released them after this
- Witnessed the gnarly act of an E. ovata taking down a damsel fly, really showing that size does not matter and a great example of interaction between terrestrial and freshwater inverts #spider #arachnology #insects
