Happy to share that our paper is out in @jappliedecology.bsky.social 😄 Experimentally increasing structural heterogeneity in forest landscapes (deadwood + canopy gaps) boosts taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity of hoverflies 🪰🌳 besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

POSTDOC ALERT🚨 Two exciting social evolution postdoc positions live today! We're looking for two excellent field biologists. Join us to explore the evolution of sociality in wasps across Africa. Apply by 11th January. Collaboration with @dustinrubenstein.com @bristolbiosci.bsky.social

Olfaction written in bones 👃🧠🦴🧬 Thrilled to see our latest study showing that the olfactory bulb endocast is a reliable proxy for mammalian olfaction, now published in @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Thread 👇

Thrilled to share that @corriemoreau.bsky.social and I have a new paper out in Evolution, digging into the varied ways that extreme worker plasticity impacts genome evolution in turtle ants! Paper 📃: doi.org/10.1093/evol... Image 📸: Steven Wang, tinyurl.com/2rbjbyjh

The final version of the clonal raider ant reference brain is now out OA in @currentbiology.bsky.social: 🐜 🧠 🐜 🧠 🐜 🧠 🐜 🧠 🐜 🧠 🐜 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

youtu.be/YdVzLeTlgBE Endosymbiosis webinar series Our Guest: Gaurav S. Athreya 2025.12.04 The Evolution of Dependence and Cohesion in Incipient Endosymbioses

Amazing #ants: When Lasius neglectus pupae are infected by pathogens, they change body odour to warn the colony of the risk of #infection - and thus seal their death @natcomms.nature.com / @istaresearch.bsky.social / Thomas Schmitt JMU 📷Christopher D. Pull / ISTA www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-...

Got some nice work about ant foraging? Can't decide where to send it? We have a special issue just for you! And, as a bonus, it's in (afaiac*) the best journal in the world @insectessociaux.bsky.social link.springer.com/collections/... *As Far As I Am Concerned

Our research group has an open PhD position! Please share widely! Possible topics include: Determinants of range limits Assembly of ecological networks (eg, plant-pollinator) The role of soil arthropods (eg, ants) in carbon storage Details: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Harmony in the hive? Think again! 🐝⚔️ Insect societies are famous for cooperation, but beneath the surface lies a brutal conflict over who gets to wear the crown! Our new review in Biological Reviews explores the evolutionary battleground caused by such caste fate conflict. 🧵

Animals are endlessly fascinating! Two cool animal studies to kick off the week: 1) How #woodpeckers peck wood, and 2) How #ants crown a queen. Flora talks with @nickantonson.bsky.social about woodpeckers and @danielkronauer.bsky.social about ants. www.sciencefriday.com/segments/ant...

The adaptive function of waste management in a social spider mite royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... | #BiologyLetters #Behaviour #Ecology #Evolution

For a while (many years!) back, @eseb.bsky.social gave us €€€ to form a Special Topic Network. Formally, the network no longer exists, but informally for sure AND we can now pick the fruits of our labours! Here is one and the next post shows another... Thank you ESEB! 🙏

Come join us in July 2026 for the 14th European Conference on Mathematical & Theoretical Biology in Graz, Austria! Registration opens now: ecmtb2026.org #ECMTB’26 @smbmathbiology.bsky.social

Our new paper offers an explanation for the universal law that "under carefully controlled conditions.... an animal behaves as it damn well pleases." We explore how stochastic mechanisms may play an underappreciated role in generating individuality. (1/7 🧵) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Fighter ant males show canalized weapon development but extreme variation in other morphological traits, highlighting how #sexualselection shapes #phenotypicevolution: doi.org/10.1093/jeb/... Neupert et al @uniregensburg.bsky.social

Parental care, and more complex cooperative systems of care, have independently evolved in hundreds of animal lineages. In an article published today, we explore how these behaviors evolve 𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭l shorturl.at/g5OPw /1

A young PI here in Mainz has a fabulous PhD position that will be filled soon! By you? Keywords: Social insects, ageing, gene expression. www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb10-evoluti...

Better safe than sorry: leg amputations as a prophylactic wound care behaviour in carpenter ants buff.ly/INPxtKN | #ProcB #Behaviour #Evolution #WoundInfection

Do you want to do a Masters in Evolutionary Biology? The call for applying to the MEME program is now open! MEME is a fantastic 2-year MSc between four European Universities on all areas of Evolutionary Biology. Apply and study in Sweden/France/the Netherlands/Germany/USA/Switzerland! www.evobio.eu

Applications for the MEME programme (www.evobio.eu ) are now open! MEME is a research- and mobility-oriented master’s in evolutionary biology (& I’m a proud alumna!), jointly run by the Unis of Groningen, Uppsala, Montpellier, and LMU Munich, with Harvard and Lausanne as partners. Spread the word!

Although highly topical, kleptoparasitism does not get nearly the attention it deserves! Here, a plant exploits the kleptoparasitic behavior of a fly that likes to snatch ants killed by spiders. 🕷️🐜🪰🌿 So the thief itself gets taken advantage of. Nice going, plants! www.cell.com/current-biol...

We had two papers out in Science and Scientific Reports in the past week - I couldn't be happier! Science paper on architectural immunity: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Scientific Reports paper on the synergistic interaction between new-generation pesticide and disease: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Thrilled to have won the Amphibians and Reptiles category of the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year and to be able to share this fascinating frog behavior! #wpy61 #frogs #herpetology www.quentinmartinez.fr

@AntCommunity 🐜 🐜 Chengyuan Liu found a Camponotus ant colony where all sexual larvae have red spots of various sizes, but worker larvae don’t. Any idea what this is?🤔 Video in the comment.

Very happy to see our new study on the evolution of eusociality come out in Evolution Letters! Our study is the first to experimentally manipulate the proportion of females that stay and help to simulate incipient sociality & assess fitness impact of helping. 🧵

We are delighted that our Winter Meeting 2025 in Leuven 🇧🇪 is approaching! Abstract submissions now open: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings Date: December 18-19 Abstract deadline: October 15 Host: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution at KU Leuven Plenary: Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social

I am recruiting PhD students to join my lab at Wake Forest University Fall 2026. Current projects focus on the neurobiology, behavior, and development of identity processing in paper wasps. Contact me if interested. Deadline to apply is Dec. 15th 2025. Please share! #PhDposition #PhD #wasplove

#ABL2025 Plenary Spotlight: Dr Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy ⭐ Join us on Nov 13-14 to learn how @avispatica.bsky.social Dr Mora-Kepfer Uy’s team uncovered captivating ways in which parasites reprogram the behaviour and lifespan of insects. 🐝🪱 Learn more about the conference: ablaoc25.sciencesconf.org

MEME alumni (www.evobio.eu) at #ESEB2025! We span so many generations now, from the first cohort (graduated in 2012) to those who are still studying, with master students, PhD students, postdocs, and PIs among us! So happy to get together in every ESEB 🤩

How I’m thinking about students having AI do their assigned work. I think we need to ask why they make this choice. Those answers can help us be more effective instructors.

We’re excited to launch our Double Degree Master’s in Global Change Ecology – a unique collaboration between the University of Würzburg (Germany) and the University of Bergen (Norway)! Passionate about biodiversity🐛, ecosystems🗻, and today’s urgent environmental challenges🌍? This program is for you!

Undergrad students often forget about genetic drift as an evolutionary process/ force. If you've also experienced this, we might have a solution for you! Our RIE2 (resources for inclusive evolution education) working group just published a week-length drift module: qubeshub.org/publications...

Today, we close the first week of the course. I'm excited for the upcoming lecture and practical on phylogenetic comparative methods this afternoon.

Really excited to share my first PhD paper about fitness effects of chromosomal inversions! Using an experimental approach we explored if inversions involved in ecotype divergence in threespine stickleback affect fitness-proxies 1/🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41... @heredityjournal.bsky.social

🎮🧠 Theory meets reality @uni-wuerzburg.de Informatics Expo. Our group collaborates with the GamesLab to ask two questions through interactive play: 1️⃣ Game Theory in the Uncanny Valley and 2️⃣ EcoSims: managing an ecosystem

Congratulations to our colleague @sabinenooten.bsky.social from the Chemical Ecology group at @ecoresearchzoo3.bsky.social on receiving the Marcella Boveri Prize of the @uni-wuerzburg.de Biocenter, and on her great presentation of her work on insect #ecology and #biogeography

Interested in host-symbiont interdependence, eukaryogenesis, and evolutionary transitions in individuality? my first paper just came out! With @gokhalecs.bsky.social and Pete Czuppon, we study when & how individuality emerges in a host-endosymbiont collective doi.org/10.1086/737588 a short thread🧵:

Now online! Adaptive radiation and social evolution of the ants

Please share widely! We are offering the 4th iteration of our free & online crash course in Evolutionary Biology, catered to students in the Global South! Join us this summer for an incredible line of up classes & tutorials from amazing graduate student researchers, covering a vast array of topics!

We are launching the Fourth Edition of the Evolutionary Biology Crash Course ⭐ @evobiocc.bsky.social ⭐. There will be three weeks covering a myriad of topics in evolutionary biology with many practicals. Please RT to reach as many students as possible. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

TL;DR. ChatGPT, can you summarize? "Generalization bias in large language model summarization of scientific research" by Peters and Chin-Yee (2025, RSOS) doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

Reminder that SSE members in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, India, and 152 low-income countries around the world can still get FREE registration for the virtual Evolution meeting! Please share with your colleagues: www.evolutionsociety.org/index.php?mo...

A cool part of expending hours quietly in front of a bivouac is that one experiences non-common encounters. Here there is a Rufous-vented ground cuckoo who is one of the many army ants followers.

Three humble army ants followers waiting for them to hunt. It seems that army ants take Easter seriously. New insights the following year

I just got back to fieldwork. I am exploring trails and searching for ants. Got lucky on finding a nest of Eciton hamatum inside a log. It is one of their favourite places when the colonies are stationary.

An army ant colony splitting into two is a rare but spectacular event. Here, two Eciton burchellii males walk in an emigration column as their mother colony fissions. In a few days, the males will fly off to look for a young queen to mate with. La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica.

1/7 Cumulative culture/knowledge occurs when information builds up across generations through a combination of innovation and transmission. In our new paper, we investigate the role of teaching and its coevolution with learning in this process. 🔗 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

An Eciton burchellii army ant submajor carrying prey back to the nest. Submajors are a specialized porter caste with disproportionately long hind legs. This allows them to push themselves off the ground and to carry even bulky prey items slung underneath the body.

Hummingbird mites sense electric fields allowing them to hitchride on hummingbirds and move to other flowers www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...