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...

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...

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

Erik T. Frank (@etf1989.bsky.social) Emmy Noether Group Leader at @Uni_Wue 🇩🇪 studying the Evolution of Social Wound Care in Ants and beyond 🐜 🌴🐝🦍🚑

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.

Thanks Alex, happy to hear you like it 🙂 we have many more studies on other ant species coming out soon as well. Turns out caring for the injured is a widespread phenomena in ants! 🐜🐜🐜🐜🚑🚑🐜🐜

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 ...

🚨 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/... ↙️ 🐜⛑️

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...

Thanks for sharing Christian and glad you liked it 🙂🐜🚑🐜

Thanks for sharing it! Its indeed a great/short summary 🙂🐜🚑🐜

Very cool picture! Already working on it, hopefully you wont have to wait much longer to hear about injury transport and more in Eciton 😉🐜🚑🐜

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.

🐜 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...

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:...

I forced myself to start reading my books during commute (instead of mindlessly scrolling on my phone). Get almost one hour of reading done like this a day and working through my backlog of books!

Genial 😂

Its indeed crazy, I had to try it myself and its scary how good it is! My prompt was literally: "Create an image from what you know about me using Legos" bsky.app/profile/etf1...

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:...

Social Wound Care Evolution

We also have many more social wound care projects being worked on: in Eciton, Dinoponera other Megaponera populations across Africa, Ooceraea... 🐜even in ants treating tree wounds 🐜🌴 or chimpanzees 🐒using insects to treat their own injuries! You can check it all out on our Homepage: www.antcare.eu

Wound-dependent leg amputations to combat infections in an ant society Frank et al. provide the first example of the use of amputations to treat infected leg wounds in a non-human animal. The findings demonstrate that ants can adapt their treatment modality depending on ...

While in the genus Camponotus ants instead prefer to amputate the injured leg to prevent the infection from spreading, a first in the animal kingdom! Interestingly, amputations are only effective for injuries at the femur, but not the tibia. 3/4 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Targeted treatment of injured nestmates with antimicrobial compounds in an ant society - Nature Communications Infected wounds pose a major mortality risk in animals and are common in predatory ants. Here, the authors show that M. analis ants apply antimicrobial compounds produced in the metapleural glands to ...

In the ant Megaponera analis nestmates not only carry back injured individuals and nurse them back to health inside the nest, but they can also detect if the wound is infected and apply antimicrobial secretions from the metapleural gland to cure the infection. 2/4
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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

Erik T. Frank ‪Emmy Noether Groupleader, University of Würzburg‬ - ‪‪Cited by 396‬‬ - ‪behavioural ecology‬ - ‪chemical ecology‬ - ‪social immunity‬

Can you add me too please? Thanks! 🐜🐜🐜

scholar.google.com/citations?us...

Very cool, could you add me too please? 🐜🐜🐜

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