Nice coverage of our work phys.org/news/2025-01...

Another news story about our work!! www.newscientist.com/article/2462...

Thank you!

Velvet ants have the Swiss Army knife of venoms A velvet ant bite like “hot oil from the deep fryer” delivers an array of peptides that inflicts pain on insects and mammals alike.

Nice story about our most recent work
! www.sciencenews.org/article/velv...

Instead, defense against insects seems to be a more important. We tested if a velvet ant could defend itself against a formidable praying mantis. In multiple battles, the praying mantis tried to eat the velvet ant, but the velvet ant always managed to sting and escape. 5/5

But then! Surprise! The peptide was not painful at all to mice! Other peptides, which are much weaker in larvae, caused pain in mice. Although we expected the simplest solution, that the pain-causing mechanism would be the same in mammals and insects, this was not the case. 4/5

We were also able to pinpoint the venom peptide (Do6a) that activates this receptor. Not only is the peptide responsible for the strong activation of pain-sensing neurons, it is also the most abundant peptide in the venom. Now we thought we had it all figured out. 3/5

Like humans, larvae have neurons that respond to painful things. These neurons responded very strongly to velvet ant venom. Using genetic tricks, we identified a receptor that causes this strong activation (it turned out to be one of
@hoosierflyman.bsky.social's favorites, Pickpocket). 2/5

Multiple mechanisms of action for an extremely painful venom Evolutionary arms races can lead to extremely specific and effective defense mechanisms, including venoms that deter predators by targeting nociceptiv…

Our paper on Velvet Ant venom is out at @currentbiology.bsky.social “Multiple mechanisms of action for an extremely painful venom” sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Velvet ants are among the most painful of all stinging insects. What makes them so painful? We used fruit fly larvae to find out 🧐 1/5