Our new paper is out in @nature.com! We uncovered how a naked mole-rat queen 👑 controls an entire colony: a natural contraceptive scent that suppresses reproduction in other females! A remarkable mammalian parallel to bees and ants! 🐝🐜 @garyrlewin.bsky.social youtu.be/enfv3zJrWKM?...

Hi #TEsky, please remember that we have an amazing community in the TransposonsWorldWide slack channel (join.slack.com/t/transposon...), which I encourage you to join. Another great resource is tehub.org. Please share !

Our lab is recruiting 🐜🧬 : - PhD student, functional genomics, Chinese nationals only - Postdocs, population genomics, open internationally Lab info and contact: lab-darras.github.io Based at Zhejiang University 🇨🇳, one of the very best research universities in the world (tinyurl.com/4nb56pv6).

Researchers estimate our planet is home to roughly 20 million insect species—only 1 million of which have been scientifically described. Learn more: https://scim.ag/4b1vRuu

Excited to share that our paper on Horizontal Gene Transfer is now out in its final form in @gigascience.bsky.social! 🥳 By analysing 163 high-quality ant genomes, we show that HGT from bacteria is widespread across the ants and likely has adaptive functions! doi.org/10.1093/giga... 🐜📸: Alex Wild

The new OrthoFinder paper is out now! In this new work, we introduce major advances in accuracy and scalability, allowing analysis on much larger datasets www.nature.com/articles/s41... github.com/OrthoFinder/...

📣 Funded* #PhD position (4 years) Wood #Ant #conservation project in Ireland🐜 @maynoothuniversity.ie Application close: 3 June 2026 More info: dirilgenecology.com/contact/ - @muresearch.bsky.social | @mu-gra25.bsky.social | @maynooth-bgs.bsky.social | * @npwsireland.bsky.social #findaphd

Pellen, @shaggyschrader.bsky.social @eyalprivman.bsky.social et al. analyse the most comprehensive ant odorant receptor dataset to date, showing that worker polymorphism involves extensive adaptation of chemical communication. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag103 #evobio #molbio #ant

Even ants deserve their spa day go.nature.com/4mH6eUi

Understanding cryptic diversity within the honeypot ant species complex of Myrmecocystus mendax https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.20.719579v1

Job alert! PhD position "Evolutionary Genomics of Transcriptional Regulation in Beetle Sociality" with @bfeldmeyer.bsky.social in collaboration with me and the fantastic burying beetles!

Bull ants use a first-of-its-kind lunar compass to find their way home. Learn more: https://scim.ag/4uc9zy6

Thanks to micro-CT and www.antscan.info, you can now explore high resolution, 3D ant images from anywhere in the world. Fantastic work from Julian Katzke, Francisco Hita Garcia, @economo.bsky.social, Thomas van de Kamp and colleagues just dropped: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our paper is now out in Nature: “Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres” www.nature.com/articles/s41... A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres. 1/14

🚨📢📄 Article in press in Genome Biology doi.org/10.1186/s130... We introduce panREPET, a reference-free pipeline to detect shared transposable element (TE) insertions across pangenomes and retrace their evolutionary dynamics #TEsky 🧵👇

#TEsky Arms races between selfish genetic elements and their host defence in termites doi.org/10.1038/s414...

I am proud to present our recent #neuroethology paper on #magnetoreception in #ants today on the #InternationalDayofWomenandGirlsinScience where all authors are #WomenInSTEM @chiaratenne.bsky.social 🤩👩‍🔬🧪🧠🐜🧭 Thanks to @sfb1372.bsky.social for featuring our research in a video 🤩 doi.org/10.1007/s003...

New #Review article from #OpenBiology: The interplay of epigenetic remodeling and transposon-mediated genomic instability in aging and longevity royalsocietypublishing.org/rsob/article... | #Genetics #Genomics

It is International Day of Women in Science! For this ocassion, a thread on influential women that illustrate prehistoric life🧵 Marta Szubert. Creator of one of the first to-scale feathered dinosar models (1997). If you've been to Poland or Slovakia, you've probably seen her models on display.

New work from @miyapan.bsky.social and our team, bringing ant, bee, and wasp labs together. @chuanxinyu.bsky.social shows that the ANTSR locus we discovered in ants has determined sex for 150+ My across bees and stinging wasps 🐜🐝, despite virtually no sequence conservation 😮 doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Whale evolution makes me uncomfortable

New in @currentbiology.bsky.social "Genomic evidence of a complex supergene system linking dispersal to social polymorphism" #Myrmecina_graminicola Mona,S., Gay,E.J., Ducancel,J., Laso-Jadart,R., Chifflet-Belle, P., Doums,C. @isyeb.mnhn.fr @ephe-psl.bsky.social et al. 🐜 www.cell.com/current-biol...

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...

Interested in phylogenomics and genome evolution? Join us in Cesky Krumlov next January! The list of topics and faculty is simply spectacular! 🧬🪾🧬🪲🦞🦐🌿🌾🦠🧫

Obituary: Jane Goodall (1934-2025) Pioneer primatologist who inspired generations of scientists go.nature.com/48aWjRU

A new Science study of ants in Fiji—involving genomic sequencing of over 4000 ant specimens from museum collections—shows that most native species have been in decline since humans first arrived in the archipelago 3000 years ago. https://scim.ag/489mI2o

day 2 #InverteFest #invertebrate weird fact: there are some ants with only a single chromosome, while some butterflies shred their genome into multiple "microchromosomes" 🧬🐜🦋

Early bird applications for the Workshop on Genomics 2026 are still open until the 1st of August, we have a few spots left! Do not miss the chance to get a discount! 🙆🏽‍♀️ #evomics2026 Apply here: evomics.org/apply-worksh...

谢谢北京！ What more is there to say? 👏 A beautiful closing ceremony with credit where credit is due - established and upcoming researchers, volunteers, organizers - more than just science, SMBE is about people. Thank you for being with us for #SMBE2025, either onsite or from afar!

The inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility symposium at #SMBE2025 was a much-needed reminder: science thrives when we create space for everyone. Let’s keep these conversations going

If you‘re at #SMBE2025 and you still have a tiny little bit of energy left for the last day tomorrow, I‘d be happy to see you joining my talk at 10:20 tomorrow morning in Room 2, where I‘ll be talking about how TEs can reshape entire genome structures in ants! 🐜🧬👩🏽‍🔬

I was so lucky to hear a very important talk about academic brain drain in the #IDEA symposium at #SMBE2025 by Mehmet Somel, stressing how we can work towards using our capacities to reduce inequality in science.

Inspiring talk by Peter Holland this morning at #SMBE2025 about why we should sequence thousands of genomes, where to go with these large-scale data, sharing our resources and much more! 🧬🧫🧪🔬

If you’re at #SMBE2025 today, make sure to come by at Esther‘s poster to hear some cool facts about the ants in our lab and discuss about transposable element polymorphisms 🐜😍

#TEsky Lepidopteran genomes have denser transposable elements in smaller chromosomes, likely driven by non-allelic homologous recombination doi.org/10.1093/gbe/...

Happy Barbara Day, happy #TransposonDay2025 to all that celebrate! Every day we get to work on transposons is such a privilege and joy, and I will never not be amazed by these jumping weirdos -the neutral, the bad and the good. Share some black walnut brownies with your friends today!

Over 50 researchers from over 25 countries have made this possible. Almost 10 years of work. I have 23,062 emails on this project. It is wonderful to see this published and I hope you enjoy it. There’s a lot on genome evolution in ants and much much more.

Also noted: LINE-1 transcription activates long-range gene expression. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Always a pleasure hanging out with ant enthusiasts 🐜 @jaimesnino.bsky.social @jannelrinke.bsky.social @haplodiploid.bsky.social @mlitto.bsky.social @clariona.bsky.social @bchitadze.bsky.social #cologneinternationalforum

Join us in #Köln! @Simo and @jaimesnino.bsky.social will be discussing what makes #ants such an interesting taxa! And insights on our own research on #socialevolution, #genome #evolution, #aging, and #developmental processes! 6 June 2025 - 6 p.m - International House cif.uni-koeln.de/events

“Among corresponding authors — who take responsibility for a manuscript as it goes through the publication process — just 17% of those who disclosed their gender identified as women” www.nature.com/articles/d41...

It was a pleasure and very inspiring having @theafrogers.bsky.social and @mendezaranda.bsky.social at our institute this week giving a talk about their research! 🧬 Comparing Hi-C contact maps from our different study organisms and learning so much more! 😎

👋 Looking forward to the 117th Annual Meeting of the German Zoological Society. Please like and share 🤩

You can tell how long-lived ant colonies are by whether the local humans erect permanent signage for their nests.

DFAM (database of transposable elements) 3.9 is out! A lot of cool new stuff and a special update for Drosophila melanogaster... 1/2 #Transposon #DFAM

Yesterday I attended the Women‘s* Empowerment Convention 2025 in the castle of the University of Muenster and it was a fantastic day with lots of really good input. Loved to meet everyone and I am very thankful to have been a part of such an important event! 🧬👩🏽‍🔬🧫🥼🧪

Natalie Cooper, Senior Editor for MEE, has written a blog post for #InternationalWomensDay 2025. Read the full post here 👇 buff.ly/SGGUlPU

🚨 New Paper Alert! 🚨 🐜 How did ants evolve their highly specialized queens and workers? With @adriatica.bsky.social, we reveal a key evolutionary innovation: adult control over larval feeding unlocked extreme caste dimorphism and complex societies. 🧵👇 🔗 Read in @pnas.org: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Thank the jumping genes for all the hot peppers! New study www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Tandem running in 🐜 is a fascinating communication behaviour & is often considered a case of animal teaching. But what do follower ants actually learn?👇 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Great work by @ainacolovila.bsky.social, Tara Williams and Simone Glaser 👏👏