Le meilleur piège ? Celui que la proie déclenche elle-même. 🕷️🕸️🐜 L'araignée australienne Propostira sp. a développé un piège en soie tendu comme un ressort, spécialisé dans la capture des fourmis tisserandes Oecophylla smaragdina. 1/2
Abel Bernadou
@abelbernadou.bsky.social
@cbitoulouse | Major evolutionary transitions • Division of labour • Social evolution • insects • ants
Another #ant from the #IUSSI workshop in Banyuls sur Mer and the Pyrenees. One of my favourites from my sorted specimens so far (and there are so many to do yet). This magnificent Messor barbarus major. 106 single frames stacked in Helicon. Zoom in for the detail! #entomology #macrophotography
On the #IUSSI @iussi-nwes.bsky.social field course on #ants in Southern France and Aphaenogaster senilis brought me a flower petal! #entomology #macrophotography
Excited to share my @currentbiology.bsky.social dispatch on the beautiful work from Tiphaine Bailly, @danielkronauer.bsky.social, @etf1989.bsky.social, and collaborators. They used the clonal raider ant to study how ants develop and maintain tolerance to non-nestmates. www.cell.com/current-biol...
Tolerance toward foreigners in ants requires chronic exposure for establishment but only sporadic exposure for maintenance
Bailly et al. show that ants learn to tolerate genetically distinct non-nestmates through prolonged exposure. Once established, this tolerance persists with occasional re-encounters with ants of the s...
cell.com
Ants are experts at telling nestmates from foreigners via subtle differences in odor profiles. In this new paper, we explore the conditions under which ants develop and maintain tolerance to foreigners. Turns out the ant recognition system is surprisingly plastic. www.cell.com/current-biol...
Tolerance toward foreigners in ants requires chronic exposure for establishment but only sporadic exposure for maintenance
Bailly et al. show that ants learn to tolerate genetically distinct non-nestmates through prolonged exposure. Once established, this tolerance persists with occasional re-encounters with ants of the s...
cell.com
🐜 European Ant Identification Workshop 2026 🐜 📍 Banyuls-sur-Mer, France 📅 June 3–7, 2026 A hands-on workshop focused on European ant diversity, collection methods, and identification — set in the amazing Mediterranean–Pyrenean place of Banyuls-sur-Mer 🌿🏞️
How fun! I was invited to write a "Species Spotlight" for Nature Ecology & Evolution @natecoevo.nature.com and I chose my favorite species the Florida turtle ant Cephalotes varians! rdcu.be/e5EZK Including a stunning photo of ants I collected by @alexwild.bsky.social
Florida turtle ant (Cephalotes varians)
Nature Ecology & Evolution - Corrie S. Moreau studies the evolution of extreme armour and gut microbiomes in turtle ants.
rdcu.be
📄 A parasitic, parthenogenetic ant with only queens and without workers or males 🐜 ⬇️ www.cell.com/current-biol...
A parasitic, parthenogenetic ant with only queens and without workers or males
Hamaguchi, Kinomura and colleagues describe an ant species that lacks workers and males and consists exclusively of queens.
cell.com
Dinomyrmex gigas, the giant forest ant (large workers are ca. 28mm) dissolves territorial disputes with other colonies via a ritualized behavior called “front leg boxing”. This allows the ants to maintain territorial boundaries while avoiding escalated conflict. Danum Valley, Sabah, Borneo.
Meet the Dracula ant Myopopone castanea, the only extant species in its genus. Like other ants in the subfamily Amblyoponinae, the workers pierce the larvae with their mandibles and drink the oozing hemolymph. Hence the name “Dracula ant”. Danum Valley, Sabah.
J'ai participé en tant que consultante scientifique sur ce film pour le Nikon Film Festival. Vous pouvez le visionner ici : www.festivalnikon.fr/video/2025/2... Ça a été l'occasion hier de faire une intervention avec @ssaft.com et @francois-lasserre.bsky.social sur la perception des insectes
her highness sleeps Ammophila wasp on brittlebush (Encelia) distal twigs at night take a close look ... she is SPECTACULAR!
🐜🥛 Des scientifiques ont « ressuscité » une ancienne recette des Balkans et de Turquie : le yaourt aux fourmis ! Leur étude, publiée dans la revue iScience, révèle que les #fourmis rousses (Formica spp.) possèdent un ensemble de ferments permettant de transformer le lait en yaourt 😆
🦅⛰️ Surprenantes découvertes : les gypaètes barbus ne se contentent pas de construire des nids, ils créent de véritables capsules temporelles. En Espagne, des chercheur·se·s ont découvert que certains nids pouvaient contenir des artefacts humains vieux de... 600 à 700 ans !
Breaking News: Jane Goodall, one of the world’s most revered conservationists, died at 91. Her discoveries in the 1960s about how chimpanzees behaved in the wild broke new ground and represented what was called “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.” nyti.ms/42kpGxt
The University of Glasgow groundspeople are going to be quite annoyed when they come in to work tomorrow...
let me share a little story about a remarkable wasp that I encountered yesterday in our local deserts I stumbled across her, and scrambled to get a few crappy photos .... but then realized that she had a burrow, perhaps a better photo op was possible ?? here she is at her burrow entrance.
Opinion: As human–AI interdependence deepens, could they form an integrated evolutionary individual, subject to collective selection? Explore this perspective in PNAS Front Matter: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #AI #evolution #singularity #ChatGPT #LLM #MajorEvolutionaryTransition
Départ pour Le Havre demain, rdv au festival sur les épaules des géants lehavre.fr/sur-les-epau... 💛 Le blob sera à l'honneur pour tous les publics avec 4 rencontres prévues 💛 1️⃣ Jeudi je débute avec deux conférences pour 300 élèves du CE1 eu CM2...Désolé les parents... Blobs offerts à l'adoption.
Today is #AmazonRainforestDay! Home to 47 million people and around 10% of all species on Earth, this incredible ecosystem is under threat from mass deforestation and climate change. You can visit buff.ly/D6xZCkJ to learn more about how to help the Amazon Rainforest.
A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species go.nature.com/4mOb5T9
‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother
Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.
go.nature.com
The 2026 international conference of the IUSSI will be in Freiburg, Germany, August 16th – 20st iussi2026.org
International Union for the Study of Social Insects
International Congress of the Insternational Union for the Study of Social Insects
iussi2026.org
New short communication!📄 Satizabal‑Niemeyer, @abelbernadou.bsky.social et al. showed that urban structures are poor substitutes for natural habitats and unlikely to maintain gene flow 🌆 doi.org/10.1007/s000... #InsectesSociaux #SocialInsects #AntResearch #UrbanEcology #Nest #Fragmentation
Very happy to see this paper published in #InsectesSociaux! This study is a continuation of a story we published two years ago 😉 with @marioncordonnier.bsky.social 1/2
Insectes Sociaux@insectessociaux.bsky.social · 2y agoNew short communication!📄 Satizabal‑Niemeyer, @abelbernadou.bsky.social et al. showed that urban structures are poor substitutes for natural habitats and unlikely to maintain gene flow 🌆 doi.org/10.1007/s000... #InsectesSociaux #SocialInsects #AntResearch #UrbanEcology #Nest #Fragmentation
Ants of the Amazon Rainforest, a photo gallery.
Ants of the Amazon Rainforest - Alex Wild
A sampling of one of the world's most diverse ant faunas
alexanderwild.com
go.bsky.app/QKajPgc A starter pack for social evolution! Lots of space left for anyone who would like to be added
Le CRCA – @cbitoulouse.bsky.social Recrute un.e Ingénieur.e d’Etude en Techniques Biologiques Campagne MOBILITE 2024-2025 CNRS (Modèles étudiés : souris, fourmis, araignées, abeilles, blob !) Déposer votre candidature jusqu’au 16 janvier 2025 mobiliteinterne.cnrs.fr emploi.cnrs.fr
Phrictus quinquepartitus is what I'd call the dragon-headed lantern bug with the multiple tubercles lining its snout, or apical process. Photographed in Belize
