It’s been a busy month, with all sorts of great things going on and starting up, so we thought it might be fun to share some of this through a new monthly news post! With plenty of us out in the field, prepping for fieldwork, busy in the lab or out disseminating our research, read below for a slice of the adventures we’ve all been on in the past month!
Outputs and outcomes
We’ve had some great news and outputs come through in the last month! Rosy was elected as the Royal Entomological Society’s next student representative – an important role for the entomological postgraduate community in the UK and beyond. Ainsley and Jack also published a paper on the decline of UK fisheries in the journal Fish and Fisheries (check it out here). This work was recently showcased at the All Party Parliamentary Group event “Future UK Fisheries”. Ainsley’s ‘Picture This’ project was also nominated for Newcastle University’s “Inclusive Education, Life Long Learning and CPD” Engagement and Place Award!
We’ve published a couple of new open protocols too, which will hopefully be useful for anyone looking to use metabarcoding for large numbers of insects or swabs of flowers.
FERG in the wild
It’s been a busy month out in the wild (both in the field and at various conferences and events)! Mia has been busy setting up solar-powered lamp posts across one of the university’s experimental farms for some exciting experiments on the impact of artificial light on ecological interactions. These sturdy additions to the Northumberland countryside will withstand the next couple of years of exciting research and will make a great talking point for student visits!
Will, Rosy and Ben took to the Royal Entomological Society’s Student Forum at Reading University. Ben did a fantastic job of organising (once again!) and will be joined by Rosy as the newest student representative for the next one (keep your eyes peeled for announcements)! Will gave an excellent talk about his soil ecoacoustic research, which will be kicking off imminently with all of the equipment now in place and ready to go!
Will also took to the British Ecological Society Rewilding Special Interest Group meeting in Durham to share his research. Broghan went along too, and has otherwise been busy in the field! With a helping hand from Rosy, Broghan took to the Hepple Estate in Northumberland to scan their complex plant life as part of her ongoing surveys of their rewilding efforts!
Jack’s also been busy, between giving a talk at the Marine Biological Association PGR Conference and setting up his marine biofouling panels at Hartlepool! In preparation for taking the panels in, Jack’s been refining some exciting new digital scanning methods (and finding solutions to the various problems that very salty water presents to electronics)!
Thought for the month
Ben has contributed something to ponder on for May: Do butterflies remember being caterpillars?
Fun with FERG
Ben’s not just offered thought-provoking questions for this post, but also a thought-provoking crossword, themed around invertebrate classifications! Have a go and let us know how you get on! Check out the bottom of the post for the answers – no cheating though!
Research spotlight
This month, we were struck by this paper from Auke-Florian Hiemstra and co-authors: Half a century of caddisfly casings (Trichoptera) with microplastic from natural history collections
Although a sad tale of the prolific and long-term impact of microplastics in our ecosystems for more than 50 years, this is an impressive use of natural history collections to study long-term trends, and a great example of why these collections are so crucial.
Answers to the crossword above:
Let us know how you did!
Foraging Ecology Research Group 
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