Postdoc Alert! New Postdoc Position for 3 years (max 3 more)- offers the freedom to develop your own research projects in close interaction with my group. Research on invertebrates preferred. Apply by October 31. Please RP. zoologie.uni-greifswald.de/en/organizat... 🧪

Looking forward to travel to Freiburg tomorrow for the #iussi 2026 and spend a week talking about social insects! If you dont want to miss a single talk and poster from our group on social wound care, no worries! We made a list: www.antcare.eu/iussi 🐜🐝🚑🐜🐝 See you soon @uissi-social.bsky.social

Excited to share our new paper on injuries in ants! 🥳 🐜 Together with Alina Koeters and @etf1989.bsky.social, we quantified injury rates and affected body regions among native ant species collected in Bavaria. If you’d like to learn more, read the full paper here: academic.oup.com/auk/article-...

Fresh ant news hot off the press! 🐜 In our new paper @ebiantonygeorge.com and I combined automated behavioural tracking of 660 ants with experimental injuries and infections to find out (1) who cares for open wounds in ant societies and (2) what drives them to do so. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Social and spatial affinity drive wound care in ants | PNAS

In social animals, open wounds pose a risk not only for the injured individual but also for its wider social context, especially when the probabili...

pnas.org

It was a great pleasure to get to work with @albamotesr.bsky.social and @ebiantonygeorge.com on this really cool project to finally understand if ant colonies have medics 🚑🐜🚑 If you want to know the answer read Albas thread below! 😉

Alba Motes Rodrigo@albamotesr.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Fresh ant news hot off the press! 🐜 In our new paper @ebiantonygeorge.com and I combined automated behavioural tracking of 660 ants with experimental injuries and infections to find out (1) who cares for open wounds in ant societies and (2) what drives them to do so. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🎉New paper out from the lab, led by @baptistepiqueret.bsky.social: ant larvae chemically suppress the reproduction of their caregivers. bit.ly/4t8uZLG An example of how social interactions are regulated at the molecular level. The work was made possible by the unique environment @mpi-ce.bsky.social

Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology@mpi-ce.bsky.social · 7mo ago

A research team from @yukoulrich.bsky.social‘s lab at our institute has identified the first brood pheromone in ants—thereby proving that larvae of clonal raider ants actively influence the colony’s reproduction cycle. www.ice.mpg.de/550783/PR_Pi...

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

It was a great pleasure working together with Daniels team to disentangle the dynamics of nestmate recognition in ants! 🐜🐜🐜

Daniel Kronauer@danielkronauer.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Spearheaded by postdoc Tiphaine Bailly, with help from Matteo Rossi and Stephany Valdés Rodríguez, along with our chemical ecology collaborators Thomas Schmitt and etf1989.bsky.social at the University of Würzburg.

Spearheaded by postdoc Tiphaine Bailly, with help from Matteo Rossi and Stephany Valdés Rodríguez, along with our chemical ecology collaborators Thomas Schmitt and etf1989.bsky.social at the University of Würzburg.

Erik T. Frank (@etf1989.bsky.social)

Emmy Noether Group Leader at @Uni_Wue 🇩🇪 studying the Evolution of Social Wound Care in Ants and beyond 🐜 🌴🐝🦍🚑

etf1989.bsky.social

🚨 New paper out in Proc. R. Soc. B @royalsocietypublishing.org "Better safe than sorry: leg amputations as a prophylactic wound care behaviour in carpenter ants" by Seiji Fujimoto et al. @etf1989.bsky.social ↘️ royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... ↙️ 🐜⛑️

Better safe than sorry: leg amputations as a prophylactic wound care behaviour in carpenter ants | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Animals often sustain injuries, which are susceptible to lethal infections. In social insects, wound care behaviours have evolved to reduce these risks. But the limits of wound care behaviours remain ...

royalsocietypublishing.org

To minimise risk of infection, carpenter #ants resort to drastic measures: they amputate injured legs immediately. “Better safe than sorry” – the pragmatic approach proved effective, with survival rates of injured workers more than doubling. Study by @etf1989.bsky.social in @royalsociety.org

Fascinating insights today by our colleague Erik Frank @etf1989.bsky.social on his work on social woundcare behavior in ants and elsewhere. For more details check out the recent article in Die Zeit about Erik‘s research (behind paywall, unfortunately). www.zeit.de/2024/53/verh...

🐜 Ants learn to recognize enemy colonies through associative learning - when attacked, they link the attacker's colony scent with aggression. This explains why ants are often more aggressive toward neighboring colonies they've fought before. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Associative learning of non-nestmate cues improves enemy recognition in ants

Bey et al. show that ants that are attacked by other ants learn the recognition cues of their attackers. This leads to increased aggression against all ants from the attacker’s colony that share the same cues. Ants thus associatively learn the recognition cues of their attackers to form an “enemy template” that improves nestmate recognition.

cell.com

4️⃣6️⃣ Audrey Dussutour (1977- ) 🇫🇷 @docteur-drey.bsky.social #womeninSTEM Ethologist, specialist in ants and unicellular organisms such as Physarum polycephalum, the famous blob, known worldwide thanks to Audrey's remarkable work in popularising the subject. www.cell.com/current-biol...

2 New #PhD positions in my institution to study #biodiversity and interactions #ants and #beetles in the tropics!

Looking for candidates for four competition-funded PhD (start Sep 2025). 1: Synergies between nest architecture and division of labour findaphd.com/phds/project... 2: Architectural immunity in ants www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

As promised, here's a list of women doing research in Ecology & Evolution. You can pin it to your home and then follow these wonderful scientists by clicking the about tab. If you want to be added just comment or DM me. Please share far and wide :) 🧪🌍🌐 bsky.app/profile/did:...

Thought I might give this a go after getting inspired by @ricaliari.bsky.social so here it goes: a picture of what ChatGPT things I do using Legos 😅🐜🐜🏥

SIX #Entomology #StarterPacks filled! go.bsky.app/Fq2CQNw go.bsky.app/7CaCbMC go.bsky.app/JVRwhS1 go.bsky.app/2nEuqKX go.bsky.app/VDorcVS go.bsky.app/TJKHRnH 7? Nominate widely: grad students, early career, colleagues around the world, equity deserving & pin the list: bsky.app/profile/did:...

Here a small introduction into what we do in our research group on the Evolution of Social Wound Care in Animals. Ever wondered why an ant would amputate the leg of their conspecific or how it knows when to apply antimicrobial secretions? Check out some of our key papers below! 🐜🏥🐜 1/4

Would you trust an ant surgeon? 🐜🏥🤕 Neat study out this year by @etf1989.bsky.social and colleagues, in @currentbiology.bsky.social. #ants #antputation dailyant.com/2024/11/25/w...

Starter Packs are great, but they favor well established individuals (understandably so). To help prop up new voices, here is a set of early career ecologists (self defined) who are, or would like to become, active on BlueSky Please reply if you would like to be included! go.bsky.app/Di74bDy

Welcoming @joanieking.bsky.social @meganbarkdull.bsky.social @docteur-drey.bsky.social and @mischocarvalhus.bsky.social to our growing community of amazing ant scientists here on bsky! 🩵🐜🩷 go.bsky.app/zo95qR

I haven't seen any starter packs made for behavioral ecology yet, so I decided to create one! If you are a behavioral ecologist (any career stage), please reply so I can add you to the list so we can more easily find each other. go.bsky.app/9mAuB6x