Jerome Beetz

Excited to share my first PhD preprint! w/ Sören Kannegieser and @anna-stoeckl.bsky.social @insect-vision.bsky.social

We investigated how hawkmoths coordinate lateralized sensory and motor control for appendage guidance, revealing similar control principles to vertebrates doi.org/10.64898/202...

New #RSOS paper: The effect of temperature and tropical milkweed on monarch #butterfly migration disruption. Read more: doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

Infected cotton bollworm. CREDIT: Lin Zhu

Baculoviruses cause infected insects to climb, which helps the virus spread on the wind. A study finds that the virus activates tachykinin receptors, stimulating visual signaling pathways, which increases locomotion and phototaxis. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/37cV50Y6zaE

Why did only one genus of insects, Halobates, take to the high seas? Oceans cover over 70% of the earth’s surface and house a dizzying array of organisms, including five species of the peppercorn-sized ocean-skater Halobates, which live exclusively at the ocean surface...

I can't overrecommend this incredible paper about water skaters (genus Halobates). No one knows how they evolved. No one knows what they eat. They are superhydrophobic, which means water LITERALLY CANNOT WET THEM. Perhaps we should call them anti-water skaters? 🌊🧪
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

‘Bat accelerator’ unlocks new clues to how these animals navigate Bats use echolocation to get around, but it wasn’t clear how these creatures managed to navigate dense environments—until now

#ProcB in @sciam.bsky.social | Acoustic flow velocity manipulations affect the flight velocity of free-ranging pipistrelle bats: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

New from Jessie Foley!

#Heliconius have elongated lives and excellent memory, but do they have excellent memory across their elongated lives? Find out now!*

Featuring learning and memory assays in 330 butterflies, and an absolute pig of an experiment to do.

*the title is a spoiler 🧪

We are excited to announce that registration is open for the 2026 Neural Mechanisms of Acoustic Communication Gordon Research Conference. The preliminary program is now live: www.grc.org/neural-mecha...

We invite everyone to apply! See you @ Sunday River, Maine, May 31-June 5, 2026.

How does a predator sense its prey?
🪱The nematode Pristionchus pacificus preys on other nematodes, but how it detects them in its environment? That is what we have been exploring :

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

The hippocampal map has its own attentional control signal!
Our new study reveals that theta #sweeps can be instantly biased towards behaviourally relevant locations. See 📹 in post 4/6 and preprint here 👉
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🧵(1/6)

Excited that my 2nd MSc paper is out in @journal-evo.bsky.social 🦋🎉 doi.org/10.1093/evol...
We find Heliconius’ impressive visual memory is not due to increased visual-structure investment over that of their outgroup relatives, but instead consistent with specialisation of the central circuitry.

Parallel Pathways for Visual and Olfactory Information in the Mushroom Bodies of the Swallowtail Butterfly Brain Papilio xuthus is a flower-foraging butterfly with sophisticated color vision. In the Papilio brain, the mushroom bodies (MBs) receive prominent visual input that is spatially segregated from olfacto...

Mushroom bodies! Butterflies!
What’s not to like?
New paper by Naomi Takahashi and Michiyo Kinoshita, involving an illustrious round of anatomists (…and me): Parallel Pathways for Visual and Olfactory Information in
the Mushroom Bodies of the Swallowtail Butterfly Brain
doi.org/10.1002/cne....

How do bats tell insects from the leaves they sit on? Dieter Vanderelst & co built a robot based on the idea that leaves reflect echoes away from an incoming bat, but the echoes from the insect remain strong during a bat approach. That's how bats do it

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

New paper from the lab, led by @ronjabigge.bsky.social, in collaboration with Kentaro Arikawa. We reconcile contrast and spatial processing functions of lamina monopolar cells by integrating 3D morphology, connectivity and neurophysiology in the hummingbird hawkmoth. tinyurl.com/mvnh3325
For more 👇

🧠The NeuroDoWo is coming to Würzburg

The NeuroDoWo is a conference where neuroscience and phd students are brought together!

📍Würzrburg, Germany
🗓️ 8th to 12th June 2026

Stay tuned for speaker announcements, workshops, and registration info
#phdlife #neuroscience #wuerzburg #conference #neurodowo

So Long 2025, hello 2026!

It was a year of bold science and meaningful progress at MBL. Take a look at our 2025 highlights: go.mbl.edu/2025

The Transmitter’s New Lab Directory Learn about neuroscience labs launched in the past two years, plus a few opening their doors in 2026.

Learn about new neuroscience labs that opened in 2024 and 2025, plus several slated to launch this year, in @thetransmitter.bsky.social’s “New Lab Directory.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/community/th...

Can also recommend, and there was a nice chapter-by-chapter reading club of it with Georg and lots of other great speakers - videos still up here:
sites.google.com/view/bbtread...

So cool to see this one out! Congrats @markbrandonlab.bsky.social and the gang!!!!

Female moths incorporate plant acoustic emissions into their oviposition decision-making process Acoustic ecology introduces an additional dimension in plant-insect communication, revealing that female moths use ultrasonic emissions from dehydrated plants to guide oviposition decisions.

A new study from the Yovel lab @elife.bsky.social reveals that acoustic signals emitted by plants affect the moths oviposition decision. An effect gone in deafened moths. "We reveal evidence for a first acoustic interaction between moths and plants, [...]".
elifesciences.org/articles/104...

Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons Nature - Using two-photon microscopy with a panoramic virtual reality setup, how head direction cells in larval zebrafish integrate visual landmarks and optic flow to track orientation is revealed.

1/6: New publication from the lab: “Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons” by Ryosuke Tanaka (@ryosuketanaka.bsky.social) and Ruben is available here:
rdcu.be/eX1L4

DNA damage modulates sleep drive in basal cnidarians with divergent chronotypes - Nature Communications Here, the authors use the diurnal upside-down jellyfish and the crepuscular starlet sea anemone as simple nerve net models to examine the potential evolutionary origins of sleep. They describe and define sleep patterns in these species, finding that sleep deprivation increases neuronal DNA damage and that sleep facilitates genome stability.

The sleep patterns of jellyfish and sea anemones share similarities with those of humans, according to research published in Nature Communications. The findings support the hypothesis that sleep evolved across a range of species to protect against DNA damage.🧪

On this day in 1930, WHOI was founded, on recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences, "to consider the share of the United States of America in a world-wide program of Oceanographic Research.”

🎉Here's to 96 years of exploration, innovation, and education for our ocean planet!

Less than two weeks left to apply for the Cephalopod Neuroscience Gordon Conference! An exciting lineup of speakers and posters, and financial aid is available upon request. 🐙🦑
www.grc.org/cephalopod-n...

1/n: A new collaborative preprint from the lab to start the year: "A multi-ring shifter network computes head direction in zebrafish" together with Siyuan Mei, Martin Stemmler and Andreas Herz from the LMU, Munich.

Bird Brains and Behavior: A Synthesis From two avian neurobiologists, a captivating deep dive into the mechanisms that control avian behavior.The last few decades have produced extensive resear

A reminder to anyone interested in #brains #birds or behaviour, our new book is available for FREE as an ebook in addition to print copies.
#neuroethology #neuroskyence #ornithology 🧪🧠🪶

direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

Defensive fungal symbiosis on insect hindlegs Dinidorid stinkbugs were reported to possess a conspicuous tympanal organ on female hindlegs. In this study, we show that this organ is specialized to retain microbial symbionts rather than to perceiv...

What looked like a hearing organ on a tiny stinkbug’s leg turned out to be something far stranger: a fungal nursery that mother bugs use to coat their newly laid eggs in protective symbiotic hyphae, shielding their offspring from parasitic wasps, a Science study finds. https://scim.ag/3MXQ4bt

Neuronal recordings in head-fixed and freely-moving mole-rats Mole-rats are subterranean rodents that have evolved remarkable sensory adaptations to life in underground tunnel systems, yet their neural mechanisms remain largely unexplored. Here, we present a pro...

Naked-mole rats are specialized to a subterranean lifestlye. Besides of having an extraordinary sense of touch, they show an eusocial lifestlye. The neural underpinnings can now be studied as @malkemper-lab.bsky.social managed to record from freely moving mole-rats.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am very excited to host a symposium about the evolution of sleep 💤 and its underlying neural principles. We will have speakers covering a wide range of organisms from honeybees, cavefish, lizards, birds, to rodents.

Congrats Andrew. What a great technical accomplishment. 👍🥳

Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too!

preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧵

Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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