Almost back home from the fantastic ecological immunity workshop. Good times, super grateful to Sophie, Jens et al for organizing - already looking forward to the next one! So much fun and science and good conversations in just a few days. Cheers guys!

Very proud and happy with @leo-theo.bsky.social and his poster presentation at the Ecological Immunity Workshop 2025 :) Excellent work Leon!

The EAE group really enjoyed #DZG2025 in Berlin — great talks, inspiring discussions, and lots of fun!

Was so nice to present our research and @unibayreuth.bsky.social at this DZG meeting! Glad to be talking about parental care and how it interacts with offspring immunity 🎉 Expect our upcoming paper that deals with this cool topic!🪲 @max-evolbio.bsky.social and I had a blast working on it #DZG2025

New study on the effect of relatedness on larval cooperation in burying beetles: sibs boost growth, strangers boost survival. doi.org/10.1098/rsbl... Congrats to Paul Huber and Daniel Wittmann!

Read the current issue of @jevbio.bsky.social here: academic.oup.com/jeb/issue 📸 Heiko Bellmann Adult #Nicrophorus vespilloides #beetle in the act of feeding its offspring atop a vertebrate carcass the beetles have monopolised.

... And it's off to the second conference in a row, this time at the Werbellinsee! Really looking forward to lots of immunity at the EIW 2025! Big thanks to Sophie Armitage, Jens Rolff, and everyone else organizing!

www.nickybay.com/ai-abuse-to-... AI abuse on macrophotography and AI generation of incorrect captions. Here are examples compiled by wildlife photographer Nicky Bay.

Amazing talk by Daniela @roesslerdaniela.bsky.social on spider sleep and possible adaptive values of rem sleep stages. Never knew spiders have sleep phases that eerily look like dream states. Traumhaft!! I wonder how many other creatures feature this behavior... Or how many don't!

Great start to day 2 of #DZG2025 with babbling bats and Mirjam Knörnschild of @mfnberlin.bsky.social!

And #DZG2025 is officially open! Great opening event at the @mfnberlin.bsky.social - what a stunning venue! We are looking forward to a great conference!

After many attempts to get Beauveria fungi to actually harm and infect Nicrophorus beetles in order to test the beetle's social immunity mettle against such a threat we found that I was probably barking up the wrong tree. Check out Leon's paper to find out why!

Through social immunity burying beetles protect their kids from diseases on their carcass. Can this protection ward off an insect pathogen? Researchers @steigerlab.bsky.social find out! doi.org/10.1093/jeb/... @leo-theo.bsky.social @max-evolbio.bsky.social

🔬 Last week at the BayCEER Colloquium, Dr. Maximilian Körner gave us a fascinating glimpse into the social lives of Nicrophorus #beetles 🪲 A fascinating and insightful talk that sparked great discussions! @max-evolbio.bsky.social Are you ready for the next talk?🌿 #SocialEvolution #Ecology

Biggest commitment to a 3 second joke I've ever seen

Chores of a tropical worker bee: drinking excess condensation water inside the hive, then spitting it out at the hive entrance 💦 🐝

Water & sun at MEM25 lunch break ☕

Excellent first day (and finish) at MEM25 :) with @drdomain.bsky.social and @joskramer.bsky.social & @kathrinaotte

Here goes the 3rd Münster Evolution Meeting, finally made it here - third time's the charm!

There's a lot more of these on Joël's page, and even though I have no longer the pleasure of working with these animals to answer questions of family life and its evolution, I can still highly recommend checking them out!!