Boulder friends: if you're in town, come see Yasmine Meroz's talk on how plants sense, compute, and behave with no brain or nervous system! Thu 7/23, 2-3pm, JSCBB A104 @ CU Boulder. All welcome 🌻 @merozlab.bsky.social

Fireflies are best known for their glowing displays, but those flashes are also a communication system. Research from @oritpeleg.bsky.social's lab is helping uncover how these signals are coordinated across groups and how synchronized displays emerge. 🔗 Learn more: www.peleglab.com 📸 Nolan Bonnie

Fun to play a small part in this new work led by Tsevi Beatus and team: when the lights go off, honeybees simply stop flying and fall! (unlike flies and mosquitoes, which pull off smart maneuvers) Thanks to Richard Terrile in our lab for turning the lights off on bees, in the name of science 🐝🪰🦟

15 researchers from the United States and Canada have won awards in the second year of Scialog: Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems, cosponsored with @allenphilanthro.bsky.social, the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation, and @kavlifoundation.org.

I’m honored to join the Scouts of the Hypothesis Fund @hypothesisfund.bsky.social and help bring beautiful, hard-to-categorize, and easy-to-underestimate biological questions to the fore. Excited for this!

👋 Meet #HFScout Orit Peleg (@oritpeleg.bsky.social), trained as a physicist + computer scientist whose research combines theory, computation, experiments, & field biology to study how groups of organisms sense, decide, & build together, e.g. the fascinating collective behavior of honeybees🐝. 1/

Honeybee swarms do not come together and fall apart in the same way 🐝 In this new preprint led by Danielle Chase, we report how to trick swarms to repeatedly assemble and disassemble in front of our cameras, while tracking individual bees in 3D! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Some of you saw a preview of this result at my Cosyne talk last week. We may have had too much fun working on this worm-fly model 🤣🤓🤣 (The digital sphinx may be imagery, but the lessons are real.)

How do fireflies synchronize their magical light shows? BioFrontiers Institute researcher Orit Peleg will present her findings on the mathematical rules behind firefly synchrony at the American Physical Society’s 2026 Global Physics Summit on March 16. #APSSummit26 https://bit.ly/4ru1L8e

In this amazing multidisciplinary collaboration, we report our early experience with the @openclaw-x.bsky.social ->

Timeline cleans with snowflake-sized baby lagoon jellyfish. . 🎥 jelliesfarm www.instagram.com/jelliesfarm?...

✨ 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...

⏰ Deadline extension for #EESBioOsc ⏰ You now have until 14 January to submit your abstract for the EMBO | EMBL Symposium 'Biological oscillators: rhythms and synchronisation across scales'! 👉 s.embl.org/ees26-04-bl

Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too! preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧵 Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/9

Boulder friends: if you’re into animal behavior or vision, come to The Language of Light: Bioluminescence in the Deep Sea with Sönke Johnsen (Duke)! Fri Nov 14, 4-5:30 pm, Benson Earth Sciences Auditorium, Room 180. Reception 5:30-6:30 at the Earth Sciences & Map Library Free and open to all!

Boulder friends: if you’re into animal behavior or vision, come to The Language of Light: Bioluminescence in the Deep Sea with Sönke Johnsen (Duke)! Fri Nov 14, 4-5:30 pm, Benson Earth Sciences Auditorium, Room 180. Reception 5:30-6:30 at the Earth Sciences & Map Library Free and open to all!

I'm really looking forward to hosting this @metagov.bsky.social seminar on the governance of bees, fireflies, and plants with my colleage @oritpeleg.bsky.social: luma.com/pzbp4zq1

#NetSI 's first-year PhD student Chethan Kavaraganahalli Prasanna co-authored a study with Univ. of Colorado Boulder featured in the NYT and published in PLOS Biology (shorturl.at/iHeXb)! www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/s...

How do #honeybees adapt their comb-building to different spatial constraints? A new study from @oritpeleg.bsky.social &co uses 3D printed panels and X-ray microscopy to reveal the existence of three distinct construction modes, from tilting cells to building complex 3D structures.🧪 plos.io/4n1g6Hs

New paper in PLOS Biology: as we raise the difficulty of our 3D printed puzzles, bees keep landing on combs with ever stranger hexagonal order! 🐝 Led by the brilliant Golnar Gharooni Fard, in collaboration with CK Prasanna & FL Jiménez journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

More on collective behavior: Our new Annual Review of Biophysics piece - with the stellar Danielle Chase - explores how animals sense, share information, and make group decisions. In honeybees and beyond 🐝 www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

It was an honor to write this, but also great fun. A chance to look back at the classics, and think about the path forward. #Physics is a beautiful human endeavor. journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...

New review in PRX Life, where we propose a tangibility scale for the physics of social interactions, and highlight a few tangible examples - from dead fish “swimming” to efficient schooling, warm penguin huddles, and dry ant rafts. Written with the brilliant Chantal Nguyen 🐟🐧🐜 tinyurl.com/naet5tdh

Fireflies are still generally declining, & light pollution is one big reason why, but a few species are also carrying on in places that are bathed in artificial light. Which is pretty wild! Featuring Sriram Murali's excellent photography! 🧪 www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

Nearly a century before the invention of the microscope and even longer before entomology became a field of research, Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1600) devoted himself to studying the natural world. He's thought to have created the first compendium of its kind.

📣 We're on the lookout for a creative postdoc with strong computational skills! Be the go-to person in the lab for building simple but powerful simulations that test wild ideas on biological rythems: from daily cycles of mussel groups at deep sea, to firefly flash synchronization! More info below👇

Help us record firefly flashes! 👇🙏

Hello hello #complexity and #emergence people. I'm getting a complexity+emergence (broadly defined) starter pack going. I've focused on active accounts that often make original posts (not just reposts) and have at least a few thousand followers. Inclusion is not endorsement. go.bsky.app/BLuVyWj

Decoding 🌟 firefly communication & conservation in Colorado Join us for a *free* evening talk by @oritpeleg.bsky.social at the Mountain Research Station (run by @colorado.edu + INSTAAR): 🗓 Wed Jun 18th 🕖 7:00 pm 📍 Near Ward CO 🔗 calendar.colorado.edu/event/orit-p...

Among the thousands of firefly species in the world, only a handful blink in sync. While both male and female fireflies flash, only the males synchronize. 🧪

In these chaotic times, I’ve been grounding myself in my mentees’ successes: here’s a beautiful story by PhD candidate Owen Martin (@lepurplemartin.bsky.social) on Colorado’s fireflies 🌟✨ theconversation.com/fleeting-fir...

NEW PAPER, JUST OUT! 👀 Insects from the '70s and '80s were already collecting microplastic, decades before the term microplastic even existed. 🤯 A thread on the surprising history of this pollutant and the incredible insect larvae that helped us uncover it. 🐛 Let's dive in! 🧵👇 1/x

📢Excited to share our new paper in Nature Physics @naturephysics.bsky.social: Cooperative hydrodynamics accompany multicellular-like colonial organization in the unicellular Stentor! How do single-celled organisms benefit from teamwork? Let’s dive in! #Multicellularity nature.com/articles/s41...?

Great to see my work and the work of my advisor @oritpeleg.bsky.social featured by one of my media heroes @zefrank.bsky.social ! Alongside my conservation heroes Candace and Richard from the @xercessociety.bsky.social! Let’s get talking about firefly conservation www.youtube.com/watch?v=czt_...

Continuing the recruitment trend! Our lab has 2 (!) open postdoc positions🥳 We're looking for creative and curious scientists to lead new projects: one on deep-sea biological rhythms and another on the evolution of biological communication🐚🦗🦋🐙🦉 If you know someone who'd be a good fit, please share!

Continuing the recruitment trend! Our lab has 2 (!) open postdoc positions🥳 We're looking for creative and curious scientists to lead new projects: one on deep-sea biological rhythms and another on the evolution of biological communication🐚🦗🦋🐙🦉 If you know someone who'd be a good fit, please share!

Our lab @CUBoulder is growing, and we are looking for a part-time lab manager! Please help spread the word 🙏 We’re excited to welcome someone who can help keep us organized and thriving as we explore collective behavior! 🎉 More info👇 jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

For the last day of 2024, #InverteFest, #InsertAnInvert2024 wildcard: This linocut shows three fireflies (Photinus pyralis, the common eastern firefly or big dipper firefly) in a field against the night sky. These bioluminescent insects are the most common firefly in North America and

How do we assess intelligence? 🎙️ Episode 5 of the 'Nature of Intelligence' season is out on #Complexity podcast! When it comes to assessing intelligence, people have all kinds of tests — the SAT, IQ tests, and so on. There’s controversy over how fairly these tests really measure human intelligence,

What's your grass-is-greener alt career choice? Mine has long been navigating desert ants. But then I came across the terrific work of @oritpeleg.bsky.social l and now I dream about studying the collective behavior of fireflies and ants. Definitely bugs for me. You? www.cbc.ca/radio/asitha...

Our latest discovery of “lowest recorded temperature for eukaryotic cell motility” going all the way down to -15deg C. Come for the crazy cold Arctic & stay for diatoms. Will write longer thread - but enjoy video below of diatoms gliding on frozen ice surfaces. Congrats @zqing.bsky.social & team.

Couldn't find one so made a quick physics of life list, enjoy! go.bsky.app/EA2VsDN

How about some collective dynamics of plants? A fun collaboration with plant whisperer Yasmine Meroz & supreme modeler Chantal Nguyen where find the crucial role of random motion in shade minimization among dense groups of sunflowers 🌻 https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevX.14.031027

Excited to share a new paper on the flash pattern variability of fireflies! ⚡ Our work, led by Owen Martin and Chantal Nguyen, in collab with Ryan Layer’s lab, offers new insights into species identification through ML data analysis: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🤔 Ever wonder how fireflies are able to find mates while flying in those chaotic clusters? 🔥 A new article from Nature by SFI’s @oritpeleg.bsky.social reveals new insights on the physics of firefly swarms! www.nature.com/articles/s42...

I am delighted to announce that the Department of Biology at the University of Washington is advertising for a tenure-track assistant professor position on the quantitative understanding of collective behavior. I will be chairing the search; details are here: apply.interfolio.com/130336

Excited to share the published version of our gait signatures paper from the amazing Taniel Winner! Really fun collaboration with Lena Ting, Trisha Kesar, Michael Rosenberg, and Kanishk Jain. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

1/ New paper! “Gender and retention patterns among U.S. faculty” w/ N Laberge KH Wapman @samzhang AC Morgan M Galesic BK Fosdick @danlarremore @aaronclauset: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... A systematic study of gendered rates & reasons for faculty attrition in US academia 🧵

A while ago @spissatella.bsky.social told me about Ascaulocardium, fossil clams that built a case around their body, with bizarre pipe-like protrusions sprouting all over the place like a human heart that grew too many arteries. What's a new cool thing you learned this #InverteFest season? 🎨 🧪 🐡