Felix Baier

a group of Drosophila erecta fruit flies on a small food patch. flies on white background

Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint

We discovered that the fruit fly #drosophila erecta requires food odor to mate and arousal is further enhanced by social group motion.

Cross-species analysis of brain activity reveals a novel gate evolved from within a conserved circuit

shorturl.at/gGYm7

Family-based selection: an efficient method for increasing phenotypic variability This article introduces a model comparing various selection regimes for increasing phenotypic variability. Individuals with the same genotype, reared in id

Our new study modeling selection for (behavioral) variability has been covered in a lovely @genetics-gsa.bsky.social podcast featuring first author Shraddha Lall and @ecoevogal.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

🚨Hiring Alert! Join Gregor Schuhknechts’s
new group Brain Algorithms and Circuits @mpibrain.bsky.social !

🧠 Fully funded PhD & Postdoc
🐟 Larval #zebrafish model
🔬 Imaging, electrophysiology, EM
💻 #SystemsNeuroscience

👉 brain.mpg.de/schuhknecht

We are looking for a Postdoc (up to 5 years) who wants to study neural mechanisms of spatial memory in honeybees.

This includes tetrode recordings in behaving honeybees.

Application Deadline is 1st of October 2025.

More details:
www.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/services/...

Thanks Ivan, and congrats on your amazing work!

A hypothalamic circuit that modulates feeding and parenting behaviours - Nature Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of mouse hypothalamus and behavioural experiments show that specific hypothalamic networks regulate conflicting feeding versus parenting behaviours of female mice.

How do animals decide if they should forage for food or stay home to take care of newborn offspring? Whose needs come first? For my PhD work now out in Nature, we examined how hunger and parenting neurons interact and are reshaped postpartum in mice 🧵⬇️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Computational Urban Ecology of New York City Rats Urban rats are highly adaptable, thriving in the dynamic and often inhospitable conditions of modern cities. Despite substantial mitigation efforts, they remain an enduring presence in urban environme...

New preprint!



tl;dr — We ran around late at night to record wild rats in NYC and figured out how to quantify their behavior and environment. 🧵

w/ Dima Batenkov, @zamakany.bsky.social, Emily Mackevicius

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵8/8 We conclude that evolution adjusted the role of the dPAG in the computation of escape, thereby raising the escape threshold in P. polionotus.

Special thanks to co-first Katja Reinhard and co-last Karl Farrow for superb collab, to @hhmi.org for 💰, and to the 🐭 for holding fascinating insights 🥳

🧵7/8 When referees requested loss-of-function expts, @arnausd.bsky.social and Chen Liu jumped in and carried us to the finish line.

They found that chemogenetic inhibition of dPAG during looming delays escape onset in P. maniculatus, such that the species appear almost identical!

🧵6/8 To test for a causal role of the dPAG, I joined Katja in Belgium, and with help from undergrad Julie Murmann, we set up optogenetics in these wild mice.

Remarkably, dPAG activation alone triggered similar species differences - suggesting sufficiency of this brain region for the behavior.

🧵5/8 To dissect further, we shipped mice to Belgium and teamed up with the @farrowlab.bsky.social: @katjareinhard.bsky.social, now w/ her own lab, figured out how to record from escaping mice - and with @bramnuttin.bsky.social, found that dPAG neurons in the two species encode behavior differently.

🧵4/8 Indeed, by staining for FOS in mice exposed to visual threat, we found that retinorecipient superior colliculus is activated in both species.

However, the periaqueductal gray (dPAG), known for its role in escape, was activated much less in P. polionotus, even when they strongly escaped!

🧵3/8 We were curious: where did evolution act in the brain to adjust behavior?

To narrow down our search, we exposed mice to an auditory stimulus – and observed the same behavioral differences.

This suggested a mechanism downstream of sensory detection, relevant across modalities.

🧵2/8 Inspired by work in lab mice, Hopi and I asked how wild-derived deer mice respond to visual threat.

With help from undergrad Tori Tong, we discovered robust variation: while P. maniculatus escaped, much like Mus, sister species P. polionotus, from open habitats in Florida, briefly froze!

🚨Very happy that my PhD work is now out in @nature.com!

We discovered that evolution, by acting in the midbrain, shifted the threshold to escape in Peromyscus mice, to fine-tune defensive strategies in different environments

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

This was a truly collaborative effort! 🧵⬇️

Graphical abstract for "Vocal communication is seasonal in social groups of wild, free-living house mice." The abstract has, from top to bottom, a title, four middle image panels, and two bottom text panels. Image title: "Vocal communication in social groups of wild-free living house mice" Middle image panels from left to right: (1) An aerial snap shot of the region where the study site is located, an agricultural landscape in rural Switzerland. (2) An image of the study site, a small barn in the forest inhabited by mice. (3) An image of a radio frequency identification (RFID) box used to track mouse social interactions. A mouse is entering the box from the left while another sits outside. (4) A spectrogram showing example vocalizations - one low frequency squeak and one ultrasonic call - recorded from an RFID box. Bottom panels: Left: Data Collection  - 10 years of RFID-based tracking data (from 6,946 mice) - 15 months of acoustic monitoring (totaling 6,594 hours) - Machine learning for vocal detection and labeling (CNN) Right: Key Findings - Vocalization is seasonal (most in spring and summer) - Vocalization is associated with the presence of pups - Vocalization is correlated with social group dynamics

Very happy to share the latest from my postdoc‬!

10 yrs of mouse social networks + 1.25 yrs of acoustic data ➡️ insight into vocalization & sociality in a wild population of your favorite lab model 🐁

paper: bit.ly/4n93yyD
data: bit.ly/4lfFBEk
code: bit.ly/4kNnMwx

#bioacoustics #neuroskyence

1/8

The Functional and Genetic Architecture of Olfaction in Deer Mice Mammals have well-developed olfactory systems, but the molecular logic driving the extraction of biological information, how this logic evolves and contributes to differences in behavior remain unclea...

🧬 New study out: we report a chromosome-level assembly of the deer mouse Peromyscus maniculatus! A launching pad for chemosensory-evolution research. Read more 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The parenting styles of deer mice Single-nuclei RNA-sequencing sheds new light on how two closely related species of deer behave differently when mating and caring for young.

A nice, layperson writeup of my latest work, which is now out on eLife!

TLDR: Using snRNA-seq, we find cell type abundance differences and sex-biased gene expression differences that may explain innate differences in mating + parenting behavior

elifesciences.org/digests/1031...

Evolution of temperature preference in flies of the genus Drosophila - Nature A study using flies of the genus Drosophila adapted to life in diverse thermal environments shows how evolution has shaped temperature preference by acting on both molecular heat receptors and th...

🎉 so excited to share my first first-author paper is out in @Nature.com, from my PhD work in the Gallio Lab! we uncover the neurobiological mechanisms that drive the evolution of temperature preference behavior in flies of the genus Drosophila 👇

go.nature.com/4i1VQn9

This is a few weeks old, but LIZARDS NEVER GET OLD 🦎😇 Find out what makes them so interesting in our Creature Column @naturemethods.bsky.social

Having flashbacks to my time in the US during Trump‘s first term. Lots of sympathy and hugs to everyone on the ground. Hang in there ❤️

Congrats Saikat, amazing work!!

SfN is thrilled to launch a new webinar series in collaboration with the @kavlifoundation.bsky.social exploring how different species’ nervous systems acclimate to environmental changes!

#NeuroSky

Gilles Laurent is awarded the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 2025 The 2025 Louis-Jeantet Prizes are awarded to Gilles Laurent, director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt and to Veit Hornung, professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of ...

Congratulations to @mpibrain.bsky.social director Gilles Laurent for being awarded the 2025 Louis-Jeantet prize for Medicine! The @louisjeantetfdn.bsky.social recognizes Laurent's pioneering work on the operations of #neurons and dynamics of neuronal networks. More infos 👉 bit.ly/4hqk6ie

📢 The Louis-Jeantet Foundation is happy to announce the 2025 #LouisJeantetPrizes, awarded to VEIT HORNUNG @v-hornung.bsky.social @genecenter-lmu.bsky.social and to GILLES LAURENT @ maxplanck.de

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

👉 jeantet.ch/en
👇 follow thread

We just re-locate our twitter/X-history with the help of @blueark.app and then our moving will be final. Please help us to build a new #neuroethology community here by asking colleagues to follow us and by using hashtags or linking @neuroethology.org so that we can share your content 🧪🧠🦋🪲🐝🦑🐟🦐🐜🐦🐸🐢🦈🪼

Humans and other animals take turns during conversations. In our new paper we study the aggressive visual conversations of betta fish. We discover how fish know when is their turn and how the telencephalon is not needed! 🧪

www.cell.com/cell-reports...

More details in 🧵 ⬇️
bsky.app/profile/bend...

I'm thrilled to be opening my own lab this Fall at the @maxplanck.de MPI for Brain Research in Frankfurt. The lab is going to investigate the neuronal and genetic underpinnings of behavioral evolution. We are hiring on all levels. Don't hesitate to share widely and reach out if interested.