FERAL 1.0 is out! Just to remind you: FERAL is an open-source toolkit for supervised animal behaviour segmentation directly from videos with no pose estimation needed. We made it much easier to install and run FERAL First, to install FERAL: pip install feral www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵

FERAL: A Supervised Video-Understanding System for Direct Video-to-Behavior Mapping

Quantifying animal behavior often requires segmenting continuous actions into discrete, interpretable states, yet most automated pipelines infer actions from keypoint dynamics and are limited by keypo...

biorxiv.org

New paper from the lab on the molecular regulation of parenting in ants. Spearheaded by postdocs Alex Paul and @tomaskay.bsky.social

Tomas Kay@tomaskay.bsky.social · 4w ago

In an article published today, we show that ancient feeding-related neuropeptides have been repurposed to control brood care in clonal raider ants. Photo: Bart Zijlstra, UNIL /1

A new study from Rockefeller's @danielkronauer.bsky.social in @nature.com finds that parenting behavior in ants—who are highly attuned to their young—appears to have evolved in by repurposing ancient neural circuits rather than inventing entirely new brain systems. 🔗: https://bit.ly/4vUY6Uc

Our lab at Rockefeller University is looking for a Research Technician to help with our studies of ant social behavior and evolution. 🐜 🧠 🐜 🧬 🐜 Please share and apply here if interested: hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Research Technician I - Kronauer Lab

Primary Work Address: 1230 York Avenue, New York, NY, 10065 Current HHMI Employees, click here to apply via your Workday account. About the Role: The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is seeking ...

hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

Looks like killa bees saved the Knicks last night!

Some army ants are extremely polymorphic. This photo shows a large soldier and a small regular worker of Eciton hamatum. If you saw them separately, you wouldn’t even think they belong to the same species. You might also notice the light color of the ants - both are callows / newly eclosed.

#Bugsky 🐙🌿 Shared with me by a fof in SoCal - this is a gynandromorph (both male & female) valley carpenter bee (Xylocopa sonorina). Females are black, males orange, so the extreme color dimorphism really stands out. Per Doug Yanega at UC Riverside, bee gynandromorphs he’s seen are mosaic instead—

Congratulations to Rockefeller’s #classof2026, here’s to your next adventure! 🍾 🔬 🎉 #PHDone

I visited Angeles National Forest with Joe Parker yesterday, and Joe found this giant water bug (Abedus indentatus). The females lay eggs on the males’ backs, and the males carry the eggs around until they hatch. Some serious paternal care.

These two male Maasai giraffes seemed to be involved in a playful dance. This behavior, called “necking”, in which the animals swing their necks at each other, is in fact a form of combat practice for young males. It helps the giraffes build neck strength and establishes dominance hierarchies.

A family group of elephants grazing in Kenya’s Maasai Mara during the early morning hours. Image taken from a hot air balloon.

A group of elephants during sunrise in Kenya’s Maasai Mara.

A herd of elands (Taurotragus oryx) at Mount Kenya, across from Old Moses Camp at 3300 meters elevation. Elands are among the very few mammals who venture up to this altitude, where extensive moorlands cover the slopes of the mountain.

Can recommend! 🐜 🐜 🐜

Dr Nathalie Stroeymeyt@nstroeymeyt.bsky.social · 3mo ago

🚨 PhD opportunity 🚨 Fully funded PhD at the University of Bristol (UK) on how ant colonies remodel their nests to optimise performance under pressure, combining experimental work, quantitative analysis, and field work. Detail/how to apply: stroeymeyt-lab.co.uk/open-positio... Deadline: 5 June 2026

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 use specialized structures on their front legs, the tibial spurs, which act like fine combs and brushes, to clean their antennae. But how do they clean their front legs? Well, they pass them through their mouthparts every now and then for a thorough wipe down. Dinomyrmex gigas, Danum, Sabah.

A colony of Myrmecina (spinosa?) ants under a rock in Danum Valley, Sabah. Upon disturbance, the workers are picking up larvae and pupae, as well as the occasional male, to carry them to safety. Note how hairy the larvae are - they can literally stand on their hairs without touching the ground.

Ant art at VISTA, the Science Experience Center at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria in Klosterneuburg. Inspired by the work of Sylvia Cremer’s group on ant social immunity.

Rockefeller scientists, including @danielkronauer.bsky.social, Vanessa Ruta, Winrich Freiwald, Priya Rajasethupathy, and @erichjarvis.bsky.social, are learning what drives social behavior, and also trying to explain what happens when those roots falter. 🔗: https://bit.ly/47J2Q5h

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena have identified the first brood pheromone in ants—thereby proving that larvae actively influence the colony’s reproduction.... weiterlesen

The beautiful dewlap displays of anoles serve to defend territories and to attract mates. Here is a lady Dominican anole (Anolis oculatus) admiring her suitor’s efforts at Indian River 🇩🇲. Who wouldn’t melt away at the sight of that flashy wattle?!

A tale of two lizards 🦎🦎 Anole lizards are incredibly diverse, particularly in the Caribbean, where many islands harbor their own endemic species. For example, Dominica is home to Anolis oculatus, the Dominican anole. 1/3

Nasute soldiers (soldiers with a long schnoz from which they can spray defensive compounds) guarding a foraging trail of the termite Longipeditermes longipes at Sepilok, Sabah.

Dolichoderus affinis ants tending membracids for honeydew. Tambunan, Sabah.

A family of curious hyraxes at Mpala Research Centre in Kenya. While these guys superficially resemble marmots, they are actually more closely related to elephants, believe it or not.

This greater blue-eared starling was annoying the heck out of a Günther’s dik-dik at Mpala Research Centre in Kenya. For a solid fifteen minutes, the impudent bird just wouldn’t leave the poor thing graze in peace. 1/3

A study from Rockefeller's @danielkronauer.bsky.social in @currentbiology.bsky.social finds that ants continually update their sense of nestmate identity and tolerance for outsiders, a discovery that opens the door to studying the neural circuits behind social recognition. 🔗:https://bit.ly/4sukQIR

Phigalia moths are harbingers of spring, ringing in a reawakening of insect life in New York each year. Needless to say that this scene in Woodstock last weekend lifted my spirits considerably. Btw, these are male moths - the Phigalia females have greatly reduced wings and cannot fly.

What looks like an oil spill on a roadside puddle is in fact a gathering of thousands of springtails (Collembola). Video below…

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