No detectable evidence for metabolic costs of long-term memory formation in honeybees, despite increased energy intake Summary: Honeybees increased their dietary energy intake following long-term memory formation, but no corresponding increase in metabolic rate was detected when measured in a group-level protocol.

journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

#BIGIDEAS | The Minds of Insects YouTube video by Stowers Institute for Medical Research

A lovely video of last week's Minds of Insects event at the Stowers Institute @stowersinstitute.bsky.social with David Stern @gallseeker.bsky.social - www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCW0...

Exploring the hidden minds of insects at BIG IDEAS David Stern, Ph.D., and Lars Chittka, Ph.D., speakers at the Stowers Institute’s Spring 2026 BIG IDEAS lecture series, reveal how aphids and bees are…

A full house joined us at the Institute for BIG IDEAS: The Minds of Insects. 🐝

Speakers David Stern, Ph.D., and @larschittka.bsky.social Ph.D., took the audience inside the surprising #biology of aphids and bees.

Explore the highlights & join us in the fall for another #BIGIDEAS!

bit.ly/4mD7rfm

Looking forward to presenting at Janelia Research Campus @hhmijanelia.bsky.social today

Thank you 🙏

My office for a week, at Janelia Research Campus 😊

#BIGIDEAS: The Minds of Insects underway! We are ready for an evening of conversation and discovery with Lars Chittka, Ph.D, and David Stern, Ph.D. 🐝

🐟+🐚 =🏠 Shell-dwelling cichlids are true underwater architects, instinctively transforming empty snail shells into protective nests. New research shows: They improve with practice, remember what they learned, and adapt to unusual conditions.

🔗 Press release: www.bi.mpg.de/news/2026-04...

Flexible, abstract rhythm perception in bumble bees Flexible, abstract rhythm perception underpins human music, dance, and speech, but thus far, it has only been demonstrated in a few birds and mammals. In this work, we show that bumble bees also form ...

“Flexible rhythm perception underpins human music, dance & speech. We show that bees form robust abstract rhythm representations. Results suggest an insect brain can encode & generalize arbitrary complex temporal patterns, pointing to deep evolutionary roots for domain‐general rhythm cognition.”😲
🐝🧪

Secrets of the bees: Revealing the sneaky genius of nature's brightest thinkers New science is showing that nature’s vital pollinators are smarter than we ever imagined. Here’s why that discovery should change what we think about one of the world’s most important animals.

Lovely NatGeo article by Hannah Nordhaus, featuring plenty of "nature's brightest thinkers", former team members Mathieu Lihoreau and Olli Loukola, plus myself (and with excellent photography by Karine Aigner): www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

The new James Cameron-produced NatGeo documentary "Secrets of the Bees" is out tomorrow. I hope it's good - our bees and team members are in it, but I haven't seen the final product yet. Here's a trailer.

Why audiences matter for honeybee waggle dance success Shake it off, shake it off...

www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/int...

Honey Bees' Waggle Dance — Wiggling and Looping Motions — Changes With the Crowd Learn more about the complexities of the honey bee waggle dance and why the audience size matters.

www.discovermagazine.com/honey-bees-w...

Honey bees dance better with an audience Honey bees don’t just perform their famous waggle dance to share directions, they actually adjust how well they dance depending on who’s watching. Researchers found that when fewer bees pay attention,...

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...

New paper just out! With colleagues in Ken Tan's and James Nieh's team, we show that honeybees dance better when the audience is numerous, and engage in active audience-seeking when attendance is low (image by M. Kleinhenz/J. Tautz) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Bee Dancing is Better with the Right Audience The honey bee “waggle dance” is an advanced form of animal communication that conveys critical information about food sources. A new study finds that the performing bee is not simply broadcasting a pr...

today.ucsd.edu/story/bee-da...

Embodied Intelligence ...creating an community to understand the emergence of physical intelligence

Looking forward to speaking at this conference tomorrow morning: embodied-intelligence.org

Professor and Department Head, Entomology - Blacksburg, Virginia, United States Job Description Virginia Tech seeks applications and nominations for the position of Professor and Head of the Department of Entomology, a tenured twelve-month academic and administrative appointmen...

We are searching for a new Department Head of Entomology at Virginia Tech. Come work in lovely Blacksburg with some pretty cool people and spectatular students.

Please repost and spread the word. Review Date 4/26/26.

jobs.apply.vt.edu/jobs/profess...

Looking forward to giving a plenary lecture at the Embodied Intelligence Conference (online) this Friday - looks like an exciting programme overall!

‪
📣 Annual Meeting of the Ethologische Gesellschaft 2026
🎤 Keynote: Lars Chittka 🐝
A fascinating keynote at the intersection of behavior, ecology, and evolution. 🐝
📍 Grünau | 📅 Feb 18–21, 2026
Four days of science and exchange—where ethology made history.
@univie.ac.at
Picture: J: Hemetsberger

Fun to give a plenary at the annual conference of the Austrian Ethological Society, though a tough act to follow from Rosemary Grant a day earlier!

Article image

Do Bees Have Hobbies? Inside the Study Where Bumblebees Played with Wooden Balls: A study led by Lars Chittka and his colleagues has revealed that bumblebees may exhibit play behavior, a finding that challenges traditional views of insects as solely diligent workers. … https://ranked.news/152218?u=b

John Lubbock (1883) on individuality of bees. It's always a bit sad when people write that individual differences in animal psychology are a recent discovery. Using the cutesy label of "animal personality" doesn't make it novel. The study of the phenomenon is as old as the study of animal behaviour.

Species-specific spectral tuning of motion vision in butterflies Supple et al. investigate the spectral sensitivity of motion-sensitive descending neurons (DNs) connecting the brain to thoracic motor centers in butterflies. Optic flow-sensitive DNs are spectrally b...

While motion 🏃 vision is generally thought of as achromatic, Supple et al. show that motion vision associated with target tracking in butterflies 🦋 is spectrally tuned 🌈 to conspecific wing coloration - likely to assess conspecific displays!

🚨 Check it out! www.cell.com/current-biol...

Cockroaches that eat each other’s wings turn into a fierce fighting force The wood-feeding cockroach’s cannibalistic love bites lead to a lasting bond. Afterward, the pair prefer each other over all other roaches.

Cool work on cockroaches that literally clip each other’s wings to seal their lifelong relationship bond (with some comments from cockroach love expert Dr Chittka 😉): www.sciencenews.org/article/cock...

Secrets of the Bees | Official Trailer | Narrated by Bertie Gregory | National Geographic YouTube video by National Geographic

A new documentary "Secrets of The Bees" will air on National Geographic on 31 March and land on Disney+ on 1 April and our bees are in it! See here for the trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mej2...

Have you ever asked yourself, how insect brains represent places? And whether insects do have place cells? Then move to Germany this summer and start your PhD in my lab. We conduct tetrode recordings from bumblebees that freely forage laboratory mazes. 🧠🐝#BeeSpace @erc.europa.eu @neuroethology.org

My home in Austria, for the duration of the Annual Meeting of the Ethologische Gesellschaft 😊 - happy to give a plenary talk here today (will be a tough challenge following on from Rosemary Grant's plenary yesterday) @queenmarycbb.bsky.social

Guidelines for the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals in behavioural research and teaching

The @asab.org animal behavior ethics guidelines now reference our work on humane husbandry and ethical study design for insects and decapods! See the full guidelines:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Looking forward to this event in April!