In a recent study [that was never published] in Nature, Leather (2020) argued that “Time of year determines some, but not all, views of my blog posts“. An analysis of an independent data set confirms this observation: the blog post “How to deal with bumblebees in your roof” shows clear seasonal periodicity (see figure above) with peaks during the most active period of Tree Bumblebee nest activity in May and June.

In contrast, posts such as “How does a scientist’s h-index change over time?” show no such periodicity (see online Supplementary Information).

I conclude that Leather (2020) is correct in his assertion that insect-related posts such as these “show a correlation (OK, not tested) with the time of year associated with the appropriate part of the life cycle”. Furthermore, one of the research councils should give us a wodge of cash to explore this phenomenon in more detail*

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*Only slightly tongue-in-cheek – I think that Simon’s results and those above are telling us something quite interesting about the ways in which people engage with insects throughout the year. Check out Simon’s piece for a fuller discussion of the phenomenon.