Many species on Earth can learn & do many of the things we think of as 'intelligent'. None have the language and abstract thinking skills of humans, and we have no idea what would lead to evolution of human intelligence. Astrobiology & anthropology are both failing to tackle this problem.

New preprint - essay - orphaned book chapter? Thinking about thinking aliens. How can we estimate how likely it is that life evolves 'intelligence'? ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... This is probably the article that got me on Netflix in 'Alien Worlds'... Where should I submit this 'for real'?

📣 SEMINAR SERIES 2026 📣
Our first seminar of the year is coming up fast! 🐜🐝

🎥 Check out this teaser! Come listen to Dr. Anna Dornhaus ( @dornhaus.bsky.social ) to hear about “What we learned about the world from studying collective behavior: algorithms, replicators, and strong inference”

@joannamasel.bsky.social

Optimal competitors: the balance of attraction and choices of mutualists, like pollinators, drives facilitation and may promote crop pollination Abstract. When two species use the same resource, this typically leads to competition, such as when different plants aim to attract the same mutualist poll

Case in point: shared mutualists or other consumers may help or hinder, i.e. cause facilitation or competition, even when limiting. The model demonstrates this principle even though competition seems the 'intuitive' outcome from verbal argument alone. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

The classic role of models in physics is to derive predictions from an already-quantitative hypothesis. This is NOT what most models in biology do! In biology, models far more often prove a general principle that was not intuitive from a verbal hypothesis alone.

What good is modeling? Introducing biology students to theory Theory and empirical science should be in constant dialogue, but often find it hard to understand one another. Here we describe a graduate-level university course we developed to improve matters. The ...

Preprint: What good is modeling? Introducing biology students to theory - arxiv.org/abs/2604.13344 - how to teach and think about what modeling contributes to science. How does it fit into the scientific method? This is often misunderstood.

Persist or give up? Fire ants motivated to search for a high-quality food source even if they don’t know how to find it - Insectes Sociaux Insectes Sociaux - Finding resources for the colony is one of the most difficult and risky tasks for a social insect worker. A worker on a foraging trip can face a number of challenges, including...

Paper alert 🚨🐜! Fire ant foraging looks remarkably robust until you perturb their communication. @dornhaus.bsky.social and I tested how fire ants respond to disruptions in pheromone trail communication during foraging. More in the thread below 🧵(1/6).
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Do primate brains and social insect colonies make decisions in similar ways? As shown in this @royalsocietypublishing.org paper, both share competing populations that accumulate evidence until a threshold is reached. @jordipinero.bsky.social @drmichaellevin.bsky.social @dornhaus.bsky.social

Seminar Series 2026: 1. Dr. Anna Dornhaus YouTube video by Animal Behaviour Live

📣SEMINAR SERIES 2026📣
Our 1st seminar of this year !

📆Tuesday 28th April 2026 at 2pm GMT on Youtube: Dr. Anna Dornhaus (@dornhaus.bsky.social) on “What we learned about the world from studying collective behavior: algorithms, replicators, and strong inference” 🐜

🔗 www.youtube.com/watch?v=oioL...

I'd love to be added.

@lovetheants.bsky.social convinced me to engage on social media again. So, here. What starter packs should I follow? I already followed her myrmecologists group.

Dornhaus Lab

I am at ESA! I would love to talk to students interested in coming to lovely Arizona for work on collective behavior, ant or bee cognition, or similar topics! www.annadornhaus.net

Hello all! Just made my account. Where are my peeps? #arizona #entomology #bees #science