Patrick Lhomme

Pretty hyped to receive this new edition in my mailbox. Thanks @fuzzybumblebee , for offering to write a chapter.”

@NHM_Bees @PaulWilliamsNHM @NHM_London @AndyPolaszek @NHM_Science @BroadGavin @drlumusetti These pompilids 😍

Hymenoptera curation team @NHM_London with John Noyes and David Ouvrard, it's not usually that tidy 🤣 #BadStockPhotosOfMyJob 🐝🐝🐝

@seb_lebreton Congrats!! 👏🏻

I am happy to share that I started a new position as a research engineer in entomology at Cearitis.

@BoydMori @CanEntomologist Congrats! 👏🏻

Echo chambers in the honeybee dance communication! We automatically detected 100K waggle phases of dancing bees and found a fascinating aspect of how bees organize their colony space. A thread.

@PaulWilliamsNHM Beauty 😍

Bombus hortulanus???

@manysarahs @_JohnMola And insularis always cohabited with centralis queens but always killed vosnesenskii queens

@patricklhme @_JohnMola Lots of variation you mean?

Last week I was momentarily dismayed to observe the invasion of my rescued bumble bee nest by a parasitic species (Bombus insularis), but have been peeking in to monitor since & the OG queen is still alive & active. Anyone have experience with invasion behaviour/ecology to share?

@manysarahs @_JohnMola Yes variation in cuckoo aggressiveness between hosts, vosnesenskii is much more agressive, and they paying the price for it much more ahah, it’s also much more demanding for the cuckoo female, but with bigger colonies she also has higher reproductive success.

@manysarahs @_JohnMola I looked at the impact of social context at emergence of new cuckoo female on their later host nest pref after lab hibernation… interesting data that I should publish some day.

@manysarahs @_JohnMola I’ve studied many nests of centralis and vosnesenskii parasitised by insularis… cuckoo reaction, killing rates, agression index, reprodutive success, were very different

Queen died here @manysarahs

t=1 day after introduction. La reine est morte, vive la reine!

@manysarahs some more

This is how the cuckoo keeps control of the workers by regurlarly mauling them

@manysarahs check this out

#gameofthrones : the queen tries to conquer back her crown

@manysarahs @_JohnMola B. insularis is very protective of her egg batches at first, she’ll aggress anyone coming close, she is more relaxed once egg hatched and would let workers feed them. If the host queen is peacefull, she might just be cool With her hanging around, very dependent on social context.

@patricklhme @_JohnMola When I initially saw her she was seemingly incubating alongside the OG queen, since that I have not seen the invading insularis again but just noticed OG was still incubating

@Etya_Amsalem 🤣

@wurflenii @manysarahs It is also true for B. insularis. If the host queen is not aggressive, she often remains apathetic in a corner of the colony. Cuckoos mostly kill when provoked. However, since they can do it within a second, it often ends up that way. I have never attempted to remove the her.

@manysarahs I've read about the original queen surviving in some usurpations and, IIRC, either behaving like a worker or becoming totally apathetic. I wonder, what would happen if the cuckoo is removed (not suggesting you should!). Would the original queen 'regain control' and lay again?

@manysarahs @_JohnMola Nice! B. insularis female behavior mostly depends on host species and host colony size, but to my experience with various hosts she is usually killing the queen once ready to take over the nest. Did you notice if she is already laying eggs or controlling workers?

@_JohnMola @patricklhme Just skimmed through his 2018 special issue paper on ecology & evolution of the cuckoo bbs and learned so much! Appears there have been observations of cuckoo & OG living harmoniously together for a while, seemingly only with species other than mine though.. so cool.

@LChittka @UNAM_MX Nice 😍 I miss working on bumble bee behavior!

Working with the gorgeous Bombus ephippiatus at @UNAM_MX, the first thing we discovered is that they are very good at opening doors and escaping. The second is that they sting first and ask questions later, if at all 😊

A PostDoc position in Chemical Ecology is available in my lab, see t.uzh.ch/1sO Please re-tweet to anyone potentially interested in the job!