Li Tian

"Nature’s ultimate weapon repurposed! We discovered that certain mantises wield their hunting legs not just to catch prey—but to shield themselves from predators! Read the full study in Proc. R. Soc. B: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

@Hines_Lab Starting from this year, we have beeing going back to the same spots on a monthly basis from mid-March to estimate how long the inclubation lull can last for some species in subtropical China, inlcuding B.breviceps and B.trifasciatus

Many bumble bee queens (B. impatiens, B. perplexus, B. bimaculatus) were buzz pollinating my bleeding hearts and dead nettle last week, but this week the garden is quiet...the late-May incubation lull

By collaborating with the @Hines_Lab and @PaulWilliamsNHM, we deciphered the evolutionary history of the most colorful bumblebee mimicry complex in southeast Asia. Our study is just published on Science Advances, and more excitingly, our bee is on the COVER! @ScienceAdvances

While much of the research on Müllerian mimicry has focused on neotropical butterflies, scientists now use high-resolution genome-wide SNP markers to untangle the evolutionary history of two mimetic species of bumblebees. Learn more in this week’s issue: scim.ag/7iE

@SarthokR Thanks for promoting our new work, Sathok! Hope all is well!

This is a great work! As we predicted in earlier papers, a genomic hotspot in the Hox iab region and the involvement of long non-coding RNAs in bumble bee color genetics make me super happy and very excited for future works in this system!

The genetics of color pattern diversity of a SE Asian bumblebee is uncovered by our work on MBE! HOX loci is AGAIN implicated! Together with our previous work on a north American species, we show that hox loci are genomic hotspots for color radiation in Bombus! @Hines_Lab .

@hin The genetics of color pattern diversity of a SE Asian bumblebee is uncovered by our work on MBE! HOX loci is AGAIN implicated! Together with our previous work on a north American species, we show that hox loci are genomic hotspots for color radiation in Bombus!

In SE China, early blooming rhododendrons are important source of pollen and nectar for spring bombus queens. In late April at Fu'e Mountain near Shaoxing, hundreds of big, fat but stunning B. bicoloratus queens can be spotted visiting Rhododendron pulchrum, starting from 6:30am.

Let’s give a final goodbye to Bombus fernaldae 👋🏼 academic.oup.com/isd/article/5/…

China has the richest bumblebee diversity in the world, here is just a small portion of our 2020 collections. In contrast to their stunning coloration, their biology and threat status have yet to be studied.

iPhone-made short video showing egg laying by queen of Bombus lantschouensis.

MY PAPER ON PREDICTING CLIMATE CHANGE RELATED EXTINCTION RISK IS OUT TODAY *IN SCIENCE*!!!! I'm unbelievably excited for this &can't wait to tell yall what we found!! Before I begin, huge shoutout to my incredible coauthors @jetkerr and @tnewbold31 1/n science.sciencemag.org/content/367/64…

Attention: NEW bumble bee species in town, here we recognize B. vancouverensis! First publication in 2020! Please RT to let others know! @leebeeeeeee @Hines_Lab @bezray2 @rufocinctus onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

Why Are Queens Broodless? Why not read this and find out? Jess Mullins, Amber Tripodi and I dug deep to find out. academic.oup.com/jee/advance-ar…

#FossilFriday: Morphometric analysis of fossil #bumblebees reveals their taxonomic affinities. Paper: doi.org/10.3897/zookey…. #Hymenoptera #Apidae #Entomology #FossilSpecies

New review on "Global Trends in Bumble Bee Health" from Sydney Cameron & Ben Sadd in @AnnualReviews of #Entomology: annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.114… @Saddlab #BOMBUSS #Bumblebees #Pollinators

@SarthokR One of few conferences that I really enjoy and actually learned a lot from

We are ... #BOMBUSS attendees! :)

Come work with us! Please RT!

B. hypocrita long thought to be also widespread in N China, but turns out from genes that the N China bee ("ganjsuensis") is a convergent colour pattern of B. patagiatus: nhm.ac.uk/research-curat…

@MichaelFoley_1 @wurflenii Sorry for missing your message. I think it is a male bombus ignitus foraging on Echinops spp

@leebeeeeeee @wurflenii Do you know the id of the attractive pink-tailed bee on the blue ‘Allium’-like plant, please?

Back to China for almost two months. Finally had my first collection trip around Beijing. Here are some common species in sub-alpine meadow of Baihua Mountain. Glad to meet them.