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...

👥 Limited to 20 participants (mainly PhD students & postdocs but open to all motivated ant lovers)
🗣️ Language: English
⏰ Application deadline: March 1, 2026

📄 All details & how to apply 👉
🔗 insectes-sociaux.org/wp-content/u...

Feel free to share — and hopefully see you in Banyuls! 🐜✨

🐜 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 🌿🏞️

Florida turtle ant (Cephalotes varians) Nature Ecology & Evolution - Corrie S. Moreau studies the evolution of extreme armour and gut microbiomes in turtle ants.

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

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.

📄 A parasitic, parthenogenetic ant with only queens and without workers or males 🐜

⬇️
www.cell.com/current-biol...

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

a wasp with silver head and thorax, red legs and abdomen, grasps onto a dead twig with her mandibles while she sleeps at night in a desert shrub

her highness sleeps

Ammophila wasp on brittlebush (Encelia) distal twigs at night

take a close look ... she is SPECTACULAR!

L'étude publiée dans @cp-iscience.bsky.social :
www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

🐜🥛 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 😆

Carreaux d'arbalète, chaussures tressées, cuir de mouton décoré… Un véritable musée naturel accroché aux falaises !

L'étude publiée dans Ecology:
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🦅⛰️ 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.

😮🤯

An illustration of a human and a robot watering a tree together. Image credit: Dave Cutler (artist).

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.

An aerial view of a rainforest with a river running through it. Text on top reads "Amazon Rainforest Day".

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.

‘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.

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.

This is just... 🤯🤯🤯

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

International Union for the Study of Social Insects International Congress of the Insternational Union for the Study of Social Insects

The 2026 international conference of the IUSSI will be in Freiburg, Germany, August 16th – 20st
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

Absence of genetic isolation across highly fragmented landscape in the ant Temnothorax nigriceps - BMC Ecology and Evolution Background Human activities, including changes in agricultural landscapes, often impact biodiversity through habitat fragmentation. This potentially reduces genetic exchange between previously connect...

These two papers aim to study the population structure of the #ant Temnothorax nigriceps in a highly anthropised environment, and investigated whether this reduces genetic exchange between populations.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

2/2

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

Ants of the Amazon Rainforest - Alex Wild A sampling of one of the world's most diverse ant faunas

Ants of the Amazon Rainforest, a photo gallery.

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