Did you know that chemicals of decomposition are also starting points of life?

Noah Whiteman explains how one organism’s trash is another’s treasure:

nautil.us/the-stench-of-…

Mia the cat

Up close of the Lady Orchid 👀

Rose chafers on some Viburnum

The fly orchid that mimics a digger wasp female and the male wasps attempt to
mate but instead move pollen around!

The early spider orchid, which is pollinated by male Andrena bees tricked into perceiving it as a female bee…they also feel and smell like a female bee to the male! 👀

Lady Orchid on the karst hillsides in Jena

I got to meet the Knaden family chickens! The rooster was surprisingly docile.

Tower-thingy

Jena

The “fly” mimicking orchid!

Made it to Jena, center of the chemical ecology universe! Or at least a star cluster.

Black-spotted longhorned beetle (Rhagium mordax)

In the funicular with Prof. Adam Steinbrenner and future Prof. Andy Gloss

A buckeye in full bloom

Heidelberg was warm today 🏰

Lilacs

At the palace gardens in Heidelberg

Look at these tiny longhorn ‘fairy moths’ (adelids) hanging out on a beech tree in Heidelberg today.!

More beech forest #glamshot EMBO