Hugo Darras

Static allometries of caste-associated traits vary with genotype but not environment in the clonal raider ant | PNAS Polyphenic traits in animals often exhibit nonlinear scaling with body size. Static allometries (i.e., scaling relationships) themselves can exhibi...

tinyurl.com/4twykhnx, tinyurl.com/2f72a6we

Piekarski: “"If some environmental factor affects caste, it will affect size too,” “…As far as we can tell, no matter which environmental variable you manipulate, the [genetically encoded] relationship between ant body size and caste remains unchanged"

Invasive Tapinoma ants at Ingelheim station Germany are so determined they’re crossing rails to get food. Total takeover 😮

A picture of a bottle of hummus. It is labeled NATURE HUMMUS

These NPG spinoff journals are out of control

PostDoc position @Uni Mainz (Germany) with
@crltt.bsky.social and me

#genomics #transcriptomics #Neurobiology to investigate the olfactory system of ants from genes to neurons

Information: seafile.rlp.net/f/53a92045be...

Congrats! Well deserved !!

We are launching the Fourth Edition of the Evolutionary Biology Crash Course ⭐ @evobiocc.bsky.social ⭐. There will be three weeks covering a myriad of topics in evolutionary biology with many practicals.

Please RT to reach as many students as possible.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Spectacular !

Spectacular work !

Gene and protein length distributions are lognormal.

Scale-invariant relationship between mean gene length and variance. Each dot in this log–log plot represents the genome of a single species (33,627), with H. sapiens highlighted by the circle. Different colors identify major phyletic groups.

Our new study on the emergence of the eukaryotic cell as an evolutionary algorithmic phase transition. The transition was continuous yet abrupt...

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

See more results, such as the next scaling law in the entire tree of life:

I'm unreasonably proud of these slides.

3-Year PhD position @Uni Mainz (Germany) with @crltt.bsky.social, S. Foitzik, and me

#Neurobiology #genomics #transcriptomics to investigate the olfactory system of ants from genes to neurons

Information: seafile.rlp.net/f/5df9298781...

We still have a postdoc position available for this project.

🤢

collaborative effort involving almost all previous postdocs in the lab and many years, but it is out and it is a great story! @kamilsjaron.bsky.social @ajmongue.bsky.social and many others

Why flying insects gather at artificial light - Nature Communications It is unclear why flying insects congregate around artificial light sources. Here, the authors use high-speed videography and motion-capture, finding that insects fly perpendicular to light sourc...

Some very interesting research from Imperial College London on why flying insects seem attracted to artificial light 🌃💡🦋

Spoiler alert! It's not lunar navigation 🌕

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

Parasitoid wasp venoms degrade Drosophila imaginal discs for successful parasitism Two parasitoid wasp venom proteins induce imaginal disc degradation of its host fly Drosophila larva, ensuring parasitism success.

I am thrilled that our paper, which is packed with our 10 years of data on the venom proteins of the parasitoid wasp Asobara japonica, has just been published!

Parasitoid wasp venoms degrade Drosophila imaginal discs for successful parasitism | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Very nice !

2-Year Postdoc @Uni Mainz (Germany) with @crltt.bsky.social, S. Foitzik, and me

#Neurobiology #genomics #transcriptomics to investigate the olfactory system of ants from genes to neurons

Information: seafile.rlp.net/f/53a92045be...

In 1897, Alfred G. Mayer created his butterfly wing projections, an attempt to gain new insights into natural patterns and laws. Vertical blocks denote individual wings, distorted and stretched mathematically to fill a tidy rectangular space. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/m...

Very nice

This is a catastrophe. While Finland has downgraded the MDPI and Frontiers journals to level 0 (meaning these publications are not recognized for research evaluation purposes), Germany has signed an agreement to promote publications in MDPI journals.

In one year, I genetically engineered the boring Arabidopsis into a beautiful ornamental flower 🧬🌹

Here is how and why I gave this model organism a visual upgrade 🧵(1/7)

#waspday at @NHM London!! look this amazing Polybia nest!!! thanks @gavinbroad.bsky.social with @waspwoman.bsky.social @femi-benny.bsky.social @ionace.bsky.social

Does this bus stop at the publisher’s office, or are you taking the scenic route to academic glory?

Did you know BlueSky only has 20 employees?

We would like to say a huge THANK YOU to those 20 warriors (who are working 24/7 to keep up with the incredible growth) for giving us a space to share.

We escaped hell to be here.

Thank you, @bsky.app & Jay Graber CEO (not a billionaire)

From Egg to Adult: A Developmental Table of the Ant Monomorium pharaonis Ants are an emerging model for eco–evo–devo studies. Here, we present the first complete developmental table––from embryo to metamorphosis––for the ant Monomorium pharaonis. While doing so, we discov...

Great to see this published! 🐜

Whoops, off to a good start, dropped the link 😅 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Clonal raider ants leaving twitter to join blue sky