Little ants groom big ones in a desert spa Arizona ‘cleaner’ ant nibbles and licks the workers of a different ant species.

Even ants deserve their spa day

go.nature.com/4mH6eUi

Understanding cryptic diversity within the honeypot ant species complex of Myrmecocystus mendax www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...

Job alert! PhD position "Evolutionary Genomics of Transcriptional
Regulation in Beetle Sociality" with @bfeldmeyer.bsky.social in collaboration with me and the fantastic burying beetles!

These ants navigate with a newly discovered ‘Moon compass’

Bull ants use a first-of-its-kind lunar compass to find their way home.

Learn more: https://scim.ag/4uc9zy6

Antscan

Thanks to micro-CT and www.antscan.info, you can now explore high resolution, 3D ant images from anywhere in the world. Fantastic work from Julian Katzke, Francisco Hita Garcia, @economo.bsky.social, Thomas van de Kamp and colleagues just dropped: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres - Nature Evolutionarily related ‘proto-point’ centromeres providing resolution to the evolutionary origins of point centromeres are identified in yeast, and comparison shows they evolved in an ancestor with re...

Our paper is now out in Nature:

“Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres”

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres.

1/14

A reference-free pipeline for detecting shared transposable elements from pan-genomes to retrace their dynamics in a species - Genome Biology Background The role of transposable elements (TEs) in host adaptation has gained interest in recent years. Individuals of the same species undergo independent TE insertions, providing genetic variabil...

🚨📢📄 Article in press in Genome Biology doi.org/10.1186/s130...
We introduce panREPET, a reference-free pipeline to detect shared transposable element (TE) insertions across pangenomes and retrace their evolutionary dynamics #TEsky 🧵👇

#TEsky Arms races between selfish genetic elements and their host defence in termites doi.org/10.1038/s414...

I am proud to present our recent #neuroethology paper on #magnetoreception in #ants today on the #InternationalDayofWomenandGirlsinScience where all authors are #WomenInSTEM @chiaratenne.bsky.social 🤩👩‍🔬🧪🧠🐜🧭
Thanks to @sfb1372.bsky.social for featuring our research in a video 🤩 doi.org/10.1007/s003...

New #Review article from #OpenBiology: The interplay of epigenetic remodeling and transposon-mediated genomic instability in aging and longevity royalsocietypublishing.org/rsob/article... | #Genetics #Genomics

marta with dyzio the feathered dilophosaurus from 1997

A protoceratops family from the museum of evolution

Muzeum Przyrody i Techniki w Starachowicach

It is International Day of Women in Science! For this ocassion, a thread on influential women that illustrate prehistoric life🧵

Marta Szubert. Creator of one of the first to-scale feathered dinosar models (1997). If you've been to Poland or Slovakia, you've probably seen her models on display.

New work from @miyapan.bsky.social and our team, bringing ant, bee, and wasp labs together. @chuanxinyu.bsky.social shows that the ANTSR locus we discovered in ants has determined sex for 150+ My across bees and stinging wasps 🐜🐝, despite virtually no sequence conservation 😮 doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

A diagram of the evolution of whales, from land dwelling mammals to the ocean giants we know today.

Whale evolution makes me uncomfortable

Genomic evidence of a complex supergene system linking dispersal to social polymorphism Mona et al. report a complex supergene system in the ant Myrmecina graminicola characterized by three alleles determining both the number of queens in a colony (monogyne vs. polygyne) and the presence...

New in @currentbiology.bsky.social
"Genomic evidence of a complex supergene system linking dispersal to social polymorphism"
#Myrmecina_graminicola
Mona,S., Gay,E.J., Ducancel,J., Laso-Jadart,R., Chifflet-Belle, P., Doums,C. @isyeb.mnhn.fr @ephe-psl.bsky.social et al.
🐜 www.cell.com/current-biol...

A young PI here in Mainz has a fabulous PhD position that will be filled soon! By you? Keywords: Social insects, ageing, gene expression. www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb10-evoluti...

Interested in phylogenomics and genome evolution? Join us in Cesky Krumlov next January! The list of topics and faculty is simply spectacular! 🧬🪾🧬🪲🦞🦐🌿🌾🦠🧫

Jane Goodall obituary: pioneer primatologist who inspired generations of scientists She was a tireless advocate for conservation, the welfare of captive chimpanzees and the protection of habitats.

Obituary: Jane Goodall (1934-2025) Pioneer primatologist who inspired generations of scientists

go.nature.com/48aWjRU

Genomic signatures indicate biodiversity loss in an endemic island ant fauna Insect populations have declined worldwide, but the extent and drivers of these declines are debated. Most studies rely on field surveys performed in the past century, leaving gaps in our understandin...

A new Science study of ants in Fiji—involving genomic sequencing of over 4000 ant specimens from museum collections—shows that most native species have been in decline since humans first arrived in the archipelago 3000 years ago. https://scim.ag/489mI2o

#SciArt doodle of an ant and butterfly, the and is holding a very long chromosome with the text n=1 above, while the butterfly is standing on a giant pile of microscopic chromosomes with the text above saying n=224-226??

day 2 #InverteFest #invertebrate weird fact:
there are some ants with only a single chromosome, while some butterflies shred their genome into multiple "microchromosomes" 🧬🐜🦋

Early bird applications for the Workshop on Genomics 2026 are still open until the 1st of August, we have a few spots left! Do not miss the chance to get a discount! 🙆🏽‍♀️ #evomics2026
Apply here: evomics.org/apply-worksh...

谢谢北京！

What more is there to say?

👏 A beautiful closing ceremony with credit where credit is due - established and upcoming researchers, volunteers, organizers - more than just science, SMBE is about people.

Thank you for being with us for #SMBE2025, either onsite or from afar!

The inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility symposium at #SMBE2025 was a much-needed reminder: science thrives when we create space for everyone. Let’s keep these conversations going

If you‘re at #SMBE2025 and you still have a tiny little bit of energy left for the last day tomorrow, I‘d be happy to see you joining my talk at 10:20 tomorrow morning in Room 2, where I‘ll be talking about how TEs can reshape entire genome structures in ants! 🐜🧬👩🏽‍🔬

I was so lucky to hear a very important talk about academic brain drain in the #IDEA symposium at #SMBE2025 by Mehmet Somel, stressing how we can work towards using our capacities to reduce inequality in science.

Inspiring talk by Peter Holland this morning at #SMBE2025 about why we should sequence thousands of genomes, where to go with these large-scale data, sharing our resources and much more! 🧬🧫🧪🔬

If you’re at #SMBE2025 today, make sure to come by at Esther‘s poster to hear some cool facts about the ants in our lab and discuss about transposable element polymorphisms 🐜😍

Lepidopteran genomes have denser transposable elements in smaller chromosomes, likely driven by non-allelic homologous recombination Abstract. Transposable elements (TEs) drive major genome size and structural variations, yet evolutionary forces affecting their accumulation and removal r

#TEsky Lepidopteran genomes have denser transposable elements in smaller chromosomes, likely driven by non-allelic homologous recombination doi.org/10.1093/gbe/...

Happy Barbara Day, happy #TransposonDay2025 to all that celebrate! Every day we get to work on transposons is such a privilege and joy, and I will never not be amazed by these jumping weirdos -the neutral, the bad and the good. Share some black walnut brownies with your friends today!

Over 50 researchers from over 25 countries have made this possible. Almost 10 years of work. I have 23,062 emails on this project.
It is wonderful to see this published and I hope you enjoy it.
There’s a lot on genome evolution in ants and much much more.

LINE-1 transcription activates long-range gene expression - Nature Genetics A CRISPR–Cas9 screen identifies genes that modulate long interspersed nuclear element-1 (LINE-1) expression in human cells. LINE-1 5′ UTRs have enhancer features and can activate long-range gene expre...

Also noted: LINE-1 transcription activates long-range gene expression. www.nature.com/articles/s41...