Andrew Dacks

The first paper from the lab is now out in Science Advances: Multimodal social context modulates larval behavior in Drosophila
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
We find that fly larvae keep their distance to conspecifics in the absence of food, enjoy reading! @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de

ECR Spotlight – John Hernandez ECR Spotlight is a series of interviews with early-career authors from a selection of papers published in Journal of Experimental Biology and aims to promote not only the diversity of early-career res...

Thank you to everyone who made this work possible: @karlakaun.bsky.social @rebeccaoramas.bsky.social @adacks.bsky.social
Check out my Early Career Research Spotlight Interview with the Journal of Experimental Biology at journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

How does the brain control locomotion? In our new preprint, we uncover a brain circuit in Drosophila that controls forward walking independently of turning. This dedicated locomotor circuit enables flexible motor control and might reflect a shared principle across species. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Thrilled to start 2026 with our latest preprint, in which we dive into a dedicated forward-walking circuit in the fly brain: doi.org/10.64898/202.... This effort was spearheaded by the fantastic @chrisjdallmann.bsky.social with help from a bunch of talented people in the lab.

Landing and takeoff sensorimotor pathways illustrated alongside fly drawings showing behavioral responses.

How do animals channel sensory information into motor pathways to generate flexible behavioral output? Excited to share a new preprint addressing this question by leveraging the new #maleCNS connectome, behavioral experiments, and in-vivo recordings: doi.org/10.64898/202.... A long🧵...

Schematic of how ER-EPG plasticity enables the bump of activity in EPGs to accurately track visual cues. As a fly makes a counter-clockwise turn (top to bottom) it will view visual cues (e.g. the sun) from a new angle and the EPG activity bump (red) will swing clockwise around the network by integrating self motion signals with these visual inputs. When the fly faces a different angle, distinct visual ER neurons are active. Plasticity forms a trough of weak synapses (large circles - strong synapses, small circles - weak synapses) that allow ER neurons with distinct visual tuning to move the EPG bump via disinhibition.

*First preprint from our lab* !!!!!
How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭
led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman:
“Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Thread ⬇️

The Larry Sandler Award recognizes excellent recent graduates who have completed a PhD in Drosophila research. The awardee will receive a fantastic opportunity to present the Larry Sandler Memorial Lecture at the 67th Annual Drosophila Research Conference in Chicago, IL! The deadline to nominate is December 15, 2025. Nominate Here Eligibility Any student completing a PhD in an area of Drosophila research between July 2024 and December 2025 is eligible. Students may be nominated by their thesis advisor, department chair, or supervisory committee member. Nominations Nominations may be submitted by the student’s thesis advisor, department chair, or supervisory committee member, and should include the following: Nominee's CV Nominee's thesis abstract of 1–2 pages A nomination letter directly answering the following questions: What are the main discoveries in the nominee's thesis? What are the intellectual and experimental contributions of the nominee to the project? How does the thesis work advance what was previously known in the field and to previous work from your lab?

Drosophila colleagues--Please submit nominations for the Larry Sandler Award. which recognizes excellent recent graduates who have completed a PhD in Drosophila research. Details are below and at this link:
genetics-gsa.org/drosophila-2...

Happy to share our current opinion on the insulin and octopamine systems and their role in shaping neuronal circuits, energy homeostasis, and behavior in #Drosophila, other insects, and 🧑‍🦱.

Calling thesis advisors, department chairs, and supervisory committee members! 📣 Nominate an outstanding PhD/PhD candidate working with Drosophila for the Larry Sandler Award. They'll present at #Dros26. Learn more and submit a nomination: buff.ly/mtfDbBD

@peiferlabunc.bsky.social

What an honor to be recognized as one of @thetransmitter.bsky.social Rising Stars of Neuroscience 2025!

Check out this year's award winners and their contributions to
neuroscience at www.thetransmitter.org/early-career...

Anti-diuretic hormone ITP signals via a guanylate cyclase receptor to modulate systemic homeostasis in Drosophila A multi-pronged approach reveals that ion transport peptide neuropeptide acts through the guanylate cyclase receptor Gyc76C to coordinate osmotic and metabolic homeostasis across multiple tissues in D...

🚀 New paper alert!
Thrilled to share our latest study led by postdoc
@gera_jayati
published in eLife.

👉 doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Continue reading for a summary. 🧵

Sensory processing reformats odor coding around valence and dynamics Extracting relevant features of a complex sensory signal typically involves sequential processing through multiple brain regions. However, identifying the logic and mechanisms of these transformations...

Excited to share my most recent postdoctoral work in the Jeanne lab @yaleneuro.bsky.social !

“Sensory processing reformats odor coding around valence and dynamics”
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We ask: how is a sensory code transformed across multiple stages of processing to inform behavior?

The Allen Institute is a premier scientific powerhouse that upholds values - open science, team science, and collaboration - that promote the progress of science rather than individual advancement. Past NGLs are leaders in their fields. To be a part of this group is a huge honor!

A single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito A comprehensive single-nucleus RNA-seq atlas of >367,000 nuclei from male and female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes reveals sexual dimorphism in sensory systems and brain cell types and widespread co-expres...

Excited to announce the final version of the Mosquito Cell Atlas is out now in @cellpress.bsky.social!! 🦟🩸

There is SO much left to find & investigate in this dataset (& the rich biology of the Aedes aegypti mosquito)! We hope this helps scientists in many fields!
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Are flies a good model to discover and investigate mechanisms of treatments for alcohol use disorder? We validated known treatments and suggest a potential new treatment: gamma secretase inhibitors.

Investigating pharmacotherapies for alcohol use disorder using Drosophila melanogaster This study validates Drosophila melanogaster as a powerful model for alcohol use disorder (AUD) drug discovery. A pipeline to test drug effects on acute alcohol response, alcohol consumption, and mem...

Ever wonder how fruit flies can be used to help uncover novel therapies for #AlcoholUseDisorder? My new paper with @karlakaun.bsky.social describes a behavioral assay pipeline using #Drosophila that can be used to screen new treatments and to investigate the mechanism of currently available drugs.

We are recruiting PhD students! If you are interested in evolutionary neuroscience, consider applying: www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...

Neuroscience faculty job Alert! We are hiring at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine! Apply at apply.interfolio.com/171533. Please repost.

🪰 A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system—a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the millions of connections between them.
🔗 https://hhmi.news/4o3EJnk

Despite These Times...my department is hiring! I really like my department, we have a good mix of disciplines and organisms and we're really low-drama. We also get pizza at faculty meeting. So if you're a computational and structural biologist, join us! 🧪 jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/260...

Come join the Neuroscience community as Case Western!

A revised version of our preprint now includes results from D. biarmipes Or67a paralogs, data from a second D. suzukii Or67a4 mutant, and a model describing how Or67a paralogs are expressed in two distinct neuronal types in D. suzukii. Stay
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Case Western Reserve Department of Biology is hiring! We're recruiting for a tenure-track position focusing on eukaryotic microbiology, especially microbial/environment interactions. Please share widely: apply.interfolio.com/174456

new pape from our lab, led by the indefatigable @chrisjdallmann.bsky.social. i am very proud of this one.

Now out in @nature.com: Our study discovering a neural circuit in Drosophila that predictively inhibits proprioceptor axons during voluntary leg movements, such as walking and grooming. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

You just finished your PhD and you are looking for a postdoc to study stress-dependent modulation of learning. We are using the powerful fly model to understand the underlying circuits and mechanisms. You can apply here:
emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...

I am thrilled to announce that I just opened my lab at New York University in @nyucns.bsky.social and Biology! Our work will explore the richness of animal behavior, dissecting the genetic and circuit mechanisms that shape its evolution.

ALT text: A UMAP representation of a single cell RNAseq dataset from the Drosophila ventral nerve cord as well as images of the Drosophila nerve cord connectome and different stages of fly development.

Neuronal diversity is written in transcriptional codes 🧬. But what is the logic of these codes that define cell types and wiring patterns?
To find out we built a #scRNAseq developmental atlas of the Drosophila nerve cord and linked it to the #connectome 🪰🧠
#preprint thread ⬇️1/8

Happy to announce that @ajblake05.bsky.social’s JEB paper was selected as this month’s Editors Choice article. This article discovered that mosquito color/wavelength preferences shift depending on the odor they experience.

Mice navigate scent trails using predictive policies Animals actively sense their environment to extract features of interest to guide behaviors. For mammals, odors are prominent environmental features which are sampled by active modulation of sniffing ...

Thrilled to share this work, long time in the making! Carried through creatively by @siddjakes.bsky.social after initial design & piloting by @trackingskills.bsky.social, with help from @trackingactions.bsky.social. Modeling in collaboration with Massimo Vergassola & Nicola Rigolli.