Explore “Brainstorming,” @thetransmitter.bsky.social’s new LinkedIn newsletter that looks at how neuroscientists are solving research challenges. The first edition features nontraditional model organisms that are well suited for studying certain behaviors or neurological conditions. bit.ly/4v6x506

Job 🚨 Please share!! We have a teaching track faculty opening in our undergraduate behavioral biology program at Johns Hopkins University Teaching animal behavior plus self-developed courses facultyjobs.jhu.edu/Positions/De... @jhu.edu @jhuartssciences.bsky.social

🚨 New paper out in @jexpbiol.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1242/jeb.... Some robber flies hunt resting prey and judge their distance well despite limited vision. We show their looping flights help them estimate this via motion parallax. A neat example of active vision making up for optical limitations! 👀🪰

Foraging 🐝 encounter diverse sets of flower-specific visual cues. A new behavioral study from @insect-vision.bsky.social shows that bumblebees rely on color first and learn additional cues, e.g., shape or patterns, only if flowers are hard to discriminate. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

3️⃣ days left to submit an abstract for poster and oral contributions for #ICN2026Vancouver ↘️ icn2026vancouver.com/poster-oral-... ↙️ Share widely and come to the most inspiring #neuroethology conference 🧠🪱🐟🦋🐦🐸🦎🐢🐝🐜🦀🦞🐙

How does an animal choose between exploring for a better food source and taking advantage of a known one? Our recent work in Current Biology demonstrates how recent feeding and metabolic state dynamically influence fly local search. bit.ly/3PfrIv3 #Science #Neurosky #Foraging #Drosophila

Vision guides directed orienting movements during obstacle avoidance in mice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.12.711382v1

Predators must estimate the size of a potential prey. Size of a moving target is assessed by angular speed/size, rules that not apply for stationary prey. Unlike damselflies, pixie robber flies use motion parallax to infer prey size. @rossonisergio.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Our recent paper made it to the cover of Science Advances. In this paper, Tuhin Chakrabortty and I studied sheepdog trials, where skilled dog-handler teams control small flocks of sheep, and showed that trained dogs exploit indecisiveness to herd and divide the flock.

Special issue editors @anna-stoeckl.bsky.social, Basil el Jundi & Kentaro Arikawa introduce their special issue on the neuroethology of lepidoptera 🦋. The issue covers a broad field of research spanning from neuroanatomy, sensory perception to behavior. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New review from our group out in Nature Reviews Psychology: Determinants of individual navigation ability with my excellent co-author: @emre-yavuz-21.bsky.social

This could be your dream job! PhD in ecology, and English and Japanese language skills required... working for POKEMON!!! www.ign.com/articles/the...

Our new paper is now out in PNAS: "The geometry of Nature’s stingers is universal due to stochastic mechanical wear." doi.org/10.1073/pnas... . Original artwork by John Sebastian

We usually assume 🐜 ants 🐜 learn views when facing their goal, but our data shows that it is not necessarily the case! We combined field experiments with a biologically constrained model to show how a two-stage neural circuit (MB -> CX) could allow this: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper out!!! Such as humans and rats, we showed that birds visual system (🐣) is tuned to specific pixel correlations from hatching: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Have you considered whether animals differ in their perception of density? We explored how differences in our senses, interpretation and past experiences shapes density perception, causing behavioral differences and affecting fitness outcomes. 🧪 nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

New paper out: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🥳 Congratulations to our PhD student Katja for her inspiring work just published in Nature Communications on how the larval zebrafish brain processes multiple visual features. Check out a short summary of the work here: tinyurl.com/yzv4ct9k

Raccoon information seeking! Very cool work on raccoons optimizing information gain in puzzle solving from @sarahba.bsky.social and lab: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New paper out on the decision strategies of bumblebees. When using visual cues to make flower choices, they switch strategy with sensory context, learning as much as necessary, but as little as possible. Based on their training time, we propose a mechanism for this switch. tinyurl.com/2r9d4jrs 🌸🐝🧠

The spines of sea urchins can generate a voltage when water moves around them go.nature.com/4kXv0yQ

During their search for food, most insects head specifically for the flowers that promise the highest reward. Researchers from the #UniKonstanz and the @uni-wuerzburg.de have now studied how bumblebees process information about their food sources. Full story: t1p.de/mndcd

Can lizards learn #spatial tasks? 🦎 A new study in Biology Letters examines spatial learning and the role of #lateralization in maze navigation. Read more: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article... @royalsocietypublishing.org

Nature research paper: The natural architecture of oyster reefs maximizes recruit survival go.nature.com/4tJHqhw

If neuroscience is serious about building general principles of brain function, cross-species dialogue must become a core organizing principle rather than an afterthought, writes @suthanalab.bsky.social. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/animal-model...

Using our bee-tracking drone, we discovered that honey bees 🐝 have highly precise and individual routes. Now published at @currentbiology.bsky.social : doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

So great! Mechanical engineers study the physics of elephant whiskers. Unlike mice, elephants don’t whisk. The physics of their whiskers suggests they amplify touch. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

(Very) belated post but super jazzed to have my undergrad research thesis (and first ever publication) published at the Journal of Insect Behavior with @ceph-whisperer.bsky.social and @alexcnkingston.bsky.social! Check it out! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Interesting interview with Ansgar Bueschges of Uni Cologne. "Today, neuroscience often focuses on genetically tractable organisms..." "But identifying true general principles requires comparison — between targeted, mechanism-specific processes." 💯💯 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Read our new Special Issue, Sensory Perception in a Changing World, guest edited by Almut Kelber, Kathleen Gilmour and Sanjay Sane, featuring Reviews & Commentaries discussing the impact of environmental change on how animals perceive their surroundings tinyurl.com/5t3mkrny

How do we know our research results are REAL? We replicate them! Most folks agree but lament on how hard it is to publish these replications. My dearest gentle reader, lament no more! Delighted to unveil: Replication Studies, a new section of Behavioral Ecology 1/ academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...

Have you ever wondered how the brain should represent the sensory world in order to generate behavior? Read our new preprint: work by Shuhong Huang shuhonghuang.bsky.social with our long-standing collaborator James Fitzgerald at Northwestern.

New data suggest that voluntary movements of honeybee antennae may reflect active sensing analogous to sniffing in mammals. @jexpbiol.bsky.social @chrisjernigan.bsky.social 🐝 journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Check our latest work to model the sensorimotor pathway of grasping in primates also advancing embodied AI www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I'm pleased to share this new #openaccess review article on 🌻 flower constancy🌻 and how it shapes plant-pollinator interactions. I hope you'll find it useful 🐝🦋 🌺: tinyurl.com/mrx59pt3

Excited to share my first PhD preprint! w/ Sören Kannegieser and @anna-stoeckl.bsky.social @insect-vision.bsky.social We investigated how hawkmoths coordinate lateralized sensory and motor control for appendage guidance, revealing similar control principles to vertebrates doi.org/10.64898/202...

Multimodal social context modulates larval behavior in Drosophila #Drosophila

Finally out in eLife!! "Early foveal cortex predicts the features of saccade targets through feedback from higher cortical areas." elifesciences.org/articles/107...

Netcasting spiders modulate silk thread stiffness via a tailorable multi-fibre meta-structure to construct a web that is hyperelastic and high load-bearing at the same time. Read about our discovery in PNAS: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... 🔓 & with video content!

🚨 🕷️ 🕸️ You thought netcasting spiders could not get any cooler?! You were wrong! Check out this new study lead by @wolffspider.bsky.social @evoimec.bsky.social showing how these spiders behaviorally tune their silk to be hyperelastic AND super load-bearing www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

More than you would expect from studying AI and less than you would expect from studying neurobiology.

Model organisms promise insights into the human brain only if they’re representative. This new paper argues that convenience-driven choices weaken extrapolation in neuroscience, and highlights growing calls for comparative, evolution-informed approaches. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

✨ New preprint from the lab on firefly synchronization, led by Owen Martin (freshly Dr. Martin!), with Nataliya Nechyporenko and Kaushik Jayaram. Our measured firefly phase-response curves reveal excitatory and inhibitory timing rules that facilitate population synchrony ✨ doi.org/10.64898/202...

Motor learning and adaptation in bird flight https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.20.700397v1

The second paper from the lab is now available on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We discovered that cannibalistic behavior in fly larvae is social-context dependent. Larval groups avoid dead conspecifics; individuals show high attraction. They only do it when no one is watching 😉

Excitation-inhibition interactions mediate firefly flash synchronization https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.19.700439v1

Forschende der @uni-konstanz.de haben untersucht, wie Insektengehirne komplexe Lichtreize aufnehmen und parallel verarbeiten. Es könnte eine schichtweise Verarbeitung der Informationen in der Lamina stattfinden. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Bild: © Elisabeth Böker/Universität Konstanz

It is widely thought that 🕷️ mostly experience the world through their tactile and vibratory senses. However, vertebrates and invertebrates like insects can smell, so what about spiders? This comparative study identifies putative glomeruli in 🕷️👃🤨! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

New paper from the lab, led by @ronjabigge.bsky.social, in collaboration with Kentaro Arikawa. We reconcile contrast and spatial processing functions of lamina monopolar cells by integrating 3D morphology, connectivity and neurophysiology in the hummingbird hawkmoth. tinyurl.com/mvnh3325 For more 👇

#UniKonstanz @cbehav.bsky.social researchers studied how insect brains take in complex light stimuli and process them in parallel. Neuroethologists Anna Stöckl and Ronja Bigge are the first to have found evidence that information is processed in different layers of the lamina. Details: t1p.de/h15yj

A researchers’ propensity for risky projects is passed down to their doctoral students — and stays with trainees after they leave the laboratory go.nature.com/4qvaffO