Associate Professor, Lab of Social Fluids at University of Cambridge
Ponderer of the #behavior of myself & other organisms. #SocialInsects / #CollectiveBehavior / #ComputationalBiology
| Website | https://leboeuflab.com/ |
| Birdsite | @adriaexists |
| Bluesky | @adriatica.bsky.social |
Putting final touches on a 400 species list for a book I'm writing about ants, for the general public, worldwide coverage.
I welcome suggestions for species I should include. Whittling 15,000 species down to only a few hundred is harder than it looks, because of course it should have ALL THE ANTS.
From the "not everything is bad" department: We are down to 1965 levels of carbon dioxide emissions in the EU, after the high in 1979. We can and must do better, but this is going in the right direction. Source (possibly paywalled): https://www.statista.com/statistics/450017/co2-emissions-europe-eurasia/
1/5
A gallery of Cephalotes turtle ants.
I've been photographing ants for over two decades, and I still haven't managed to shoot even 20% of the species in one of my favorite genera.
#ants #insects #photography #biodiversity
https://www.alexanderwild.com/Ants/Taxonomic-List-of-Ant-Genera/Cephalotes
is a diverse genus of heavily-armored, tree-dwelling myrmicine ants found in forested regions of the new world tropics and subtropics. A number of canopy species show the unusual habit of controlled gliding flight when knocked from tree branches. Most species are polymorphic, having a "soldier" caste with an enlarged head used for blocking the nest entrances as a living door.
MRC are removing closing dates for grant applications (among other changes)
https://www.ukri.org/news/simplifying-access-to-mrc-applicant-led-funding/?utm_source=mastodon
Ants are full of surprises. Congrats @SelfishMeme and team!
From: @alexwild
https://mastodon.online/@alexwild/115142401997135299
This finding that some ant queens can lay eggs of another species is astonishing. Biology is far stranger than we can possibly imagine. #Ants #Science #Evolution https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02807-0
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09425-w Wow this paper.
So:
- there's a species of ant with queens
- the queens mate with males of the same species to make more queens
- or the queens mate with males of a *totally different species that diverged millions of years ago* to make hybrid workers, that enable eusociality
- and also the queens can lay male eggs of both species of ant
Love it. Time to rethink our understanding of the concept of "species" again, I guess. I adore these sorts of examples of species that looked at the textbook, said, "Nah, that sounds dull," and then try something so mind-blowing that you wonder if they're just having a laugh.
In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same mother having distinct genomes and morphologies.
The anti-autocracy handbook: how scientists can cope with democratic backsliding. This guide is a call to action, resilience, and collective defence of democracy and academic freedom in the face of mounting authoritarianism.
The Anti-Autocracy Handbook is a call to action, resilience, and collective defence of democracy, truth, and academic freedom in the face of mounting authoritarianism. It tries to provide guidance to scholars navigating the growing global trend of democratic backsliding and autocratization, in particular in the U.S. To this end, it sets out how autocracies often follow a common playbook, built around the “3 Ps”: populism, polarization, and post-truth. Leaders present themselves as voices of “the people” against “corrupt elites”, inflame societal divisions, and undermine facts to avoid accountability. This leads to a cascade of dangers for scholarship, including censorship, restrictions on funding and research collaboration, and even violence. The Trump administration serves as a contemporary example, with policies that curtail international scientific cooperation, revoke research grants, and suppress studies related to public health, climate change and minority issues. Because open inquiry and dissent are central to science and academia—qualities antithetical to authoritarian control—academia is often among the first targets of autocrats. To help scholars resist authoritarian developments, the handbook highlights both historic and contemporary measures aimed at attacking scholars, their institutional environments, and their scholarship. The handbook also sets out a framework for action based on personal risk level—low, medium, high, or extreme. This is designed to help scholars think about their own risk and purposefully choose actions in line with it. The handbook considers tools for enhancing digital safety and highlights the importance of ongoing documentation, preserving imperilled data, and creating distributed archives as a defence against erasure. It also calls on scholars to tell their stories—publicly or anonymously—to inspire others, maintain accountability and preserve a historical record. Accompanying the handbook is a living wiki that will continue to incorporate new developments and provide updates on global efforts by scholars to push back against authoritarianism and safeguard the democratic foundations that enable free inquiry. Available translations German version: Das Anti-Autokratie-Handbuch: Ein Leitfaden für Forschende zum Umgang mit erodierenden Demokratien Italian version: Il manuale Anti-Autocrazia: Una guida per aiutare gli studiosi ad orientarsi nell'arretramento democratico
Alex Wild
Boris Barbour
Jan Wildeboer 😷
Stephen Royle
Sarah Arnold
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
eLife