Chris Pull

Aesthetically pleasing ants that we painted today…

#ProcB Transcriptomic responses to location learning by #honeybee dancers are partly mirrored in the #brains of dance-followers ow.ly/ZvjU50Qkzmt #OpenAccess @ElliLeadbeater1 @yannick__ @WaspWoman @fmanfredini79

The brains of bees who follow a dance have a similar molecular signature to the dancers they followed! 🐝🧠🧬 Extremely excited to see our research published in #ProcB today: here 👉🏽 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs… with @ElliLeadbeater1, @yannick__ , @WaspWoman, @RSocPublishing

Amazing conference @BristolBioSci! And I'm very proud of @OxfordBiology MBiol student @bizzell_flynn who won best student talk for his masters work!

Anapids are tiny spiders that look like bald angry men.

🎺🎺Post doc available 🎺 Modelling movement of released Gamebirds to understand their management & ecological effects (iSSF, ABM, spatial skills, conservation) Starting September. Advert out soon. DM me now to discuss I'm at #behaviour2023 so can chat F2F if you're there too

Beautiful and dense review by Antoine Couto on the lineage-specific adaptations in the olfactory pathway of social Hymenoptera. A must read for all those interested in the evolution of Eusociality - Biological Reviews onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

This is what the "spores" look like. They are rather large. I have no idea what this stuff is 😂

Update on the weird fungus. It was plated up and took a few weeks, but today I noticed it's finally produced new "spores". Next step, can we infect the ants and replicate the same biting phenotype?

@PepijnKooij We will do if it turns out to be something interesting!

@chris_pull Did you try to sequence the ITS region for identification?

Really pleased to see our review on best practices for insect olfactometer experiments published today! This has been three years in the making and wouldn't have been completed without major contributions from @ipm_tom , @EdHarris9000 and @benclunie. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ee…

Mating normally takes place on the wing and the male dies shortly after. This pair thought my arm was a good spot though...

Another mating flight to tonight! Once fertilised, ant queens fall to the ground and snap off their wings before searching for a potential nest site 🐜

Our new paper is out today in @RSocPublishing Interface journal (@MarieRAttard @bowen_james @GroupBowen). All about eggshell surface texture. Paper link ⬇️. Thank you @LeverhulmeTrust for funding, & @NHM_Oology @NHM_Tring for samples! #birds #ornithology @RHULBioSci @RHULScience

Planning on applying for a 2024 ERC Starting Grant? The call is now open! Application portal 👉 bit.ly/StGApply2024 ERC 2024 Work Programme 👉 bit.ly/ERC2024WP And remember, the deadline to apply for an #ERCStG is 24 October 2023!

Interested in #collectivebehaviour, #decisionmaking, and #ants? Check out my first #PhD paper, out today in @PNASNews! @ChrisRReid1, @sjmgarnier, Chris Lustri, @MarineMcnab, and I studied how colonies of ants make decisions when facing an uncertain task pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

We finally finished setting up our queen experiments from the massive mating flight on Friday. Turns out the we collected 400+ queens!

Almost 12 years ago a I started my final year research project with @sphaerularia collecting ant queens...tonight I'm back at it again! Must've collected a good 300-400!

@CharissaB @another_ant_guy One of the dismantled individuals...

@CharissaB @another_ant_guy Some marginally better pictures. Very weird but very interesting!

Weird observation...these ants look like they're doing the biting death grip seen in "zombie" ants and they have an unusual, globular like fungus growth on them. @CharissaB/@another_ant_guy?

@CharissaB @another_ant_guy Yeah, I noticed it today when feeding the colony. Some of them has been dismantled by other ants by the looks of things. I have put the dish into a moist petri to see what grows! I may send you a PM about next steps if it does...