iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Anna Dornhaus

Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

We have *six days* left until the Academy of Natural Sciences, North America's oldest Natural History museum, is scheduled to close it's doors. Here are *six reasons* why we cannot - and will not- let that happen.

a slide that says 6 days until the doors close -- 6 reasons we can keep them open, save-the-academy.org @savetheacademy

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Reposted by Anna Dornhaus

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Research units from across government have been gutted. More than 10,000 PhDs have left government. For example the research arm of the Department of Education lost 90% of their staff and the research office for the Secretary of Health and Human Services lost an estimated 60% of their staff.

figure shows dramatic cut in research staff

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Reposted by Anna Dornhaus

Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Goooood morning! The 2026 Snail Facts Calendars are OUT! We've got 24 days of scratchable snail fact goodness, designed by Philly artist Kelly Nichols! Advent calendars are cute as hell, a delightful tradition, and keep @skypeascientist.bsky.social funded! Get one at SquidFacts.net Pls repost ❤️

An 11x14 inch poster featuring snails, slugs, nudibranchs, and other snails! There are 24 yellow-green snail shells that you can scratch off. There's a leaf sheep and sea bunny and sea angel and fire snail and banana slug and mystery snail and ramshorn snail and candy cane snail

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Anna Dornhaus @dornhaus.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Message me if you qualify and are interested in working on a proposal together

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Reposted by Anna Dornhaus

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Anna Dornhaus making the case that *evolution shapes variation*, even among individuals within a colony at the same time. Absolutely stunning examples of diligent tracking of variation in ant walking speeds vs. activity, corpulence, and even antenna sensilla density! @dornhaus.bsky.social #IUSSI26

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Reposted by Anna Dornhaus

Ed Hagen @edhagen.net · 14/08/2026

From Tinbergen (1963), where he puts forward his famous four questions 🧪 #BioAnth

Survival value
Lorenz's thesis that behaviour patterns, i.e. their mechanisms, ought to be considered "organs", and to be studied as such, has also had a beneficial effect on the study of the survival value of behaviour. In the post-Darwinian era, a reaction against uncritical acceptance of the selection theory set in, Which reached its climax in the great days of Comparative Anatomy, but which still affects many physiologically inclined biologists. It was a reaction against the habit of making uncritical guesses about the survival value, the function, of life processes and structures. This reaction, of course healthy in itself, did not (as one might expect) result in an attempt to improve methods of studying survival value; rather it deteriorated into lack of interest in the problem = one of the most deplorable things that can happen to a science. Worse, it even developed into an attitude of intolerance: even wondering about survival value was considered unscientific. I still remember how perplexed I was upon being told off firmly by one of my Zoology professors when I brought up the question of survival value after he had asked "Has anyone an idea why so many birds flock more densely when they are attacked by a bird of prey?"

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Anna Dornhaus @dornhaus.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Looking forward to visiting beautiful Freiburg, seeing old friends and colleagues, and hearing cool and new insights about social insect research!

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Reposted by Anna Dornhaus

Dirk Gütlin @gutlin.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

The US is now officially, as a nation, trying to pull the Russia move of attacking the EU by shoving money into "aligned" groups such as the far-right and Anti-EU AfD party in Germany.

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Anna Dornhaus @dornhaus.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Lecture on what we can learn from collective behavior about the world in general - www.youtube.com/watch?v=oioL...: algorithmic thinking, how to make groups behave better, how to get at truth despite our failing intuition

youtube.com

Seminar Series 2026: 1. Dr. Anna Dornhaus

YouTube video by Animal Behaviour Live

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Anna Dornhaus @dornhaus.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Many species on Earth can learn & do many of the things we think of as 'intelligent'. None have the language and abstract thinking skills of humans, and we have no idea what would lead to evolution of human intelligence. Astrobiology & anthropology are both failing to tackle this problem.

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Anna Dornhaus @dornhaus.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

New preprint - essay - orphaned book chapter? Thinking about thinking aliens. How can we estimate how likely it is that life evolves 'intelligence'? ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... This is probably the article that got me on Netflix in 'Alien Worlds'... Where should I submit this 'for real'?

ecoevorxiv.org

Aliens Are Likely to Be Smart But Not “Intelligent”: What Evolution of Cognition on Earth Tells Us about Extraterrestrial Intelligence

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Reposted by Anna Dornhaus

Animal Behaviour Live @animalbehaviour.live · 17/04/2026

📣 SEMINAR SERIES 2026 📣 Our first seminar of the year is coming up fast! 🐜🐝 🎥 Check out this teaser! Come listen to Dr. Anna Dornhaus ( @dornhaus.bsky.social ) to hear about “What we learned about the world from studying collective behavior: algorithms, replicators, and strong inference”

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Anna Dornhaus @dornhaus.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Case in point: shared mutualists or other consumers may help or hinder, i.e. cause facilitation or competition, even when limiting. The model demonstrates this principle even though competition seems the 'intuitive' outcome from verbal argument alone. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

royalsocietypublishing.org

Optimal competitors: the balance of attraction and choices of mutualists, like pollinators, drives facilitation and may promote crop pollination

Abstract. When two species use the same resource, this typically leads to competition, such as when different plants aim to attract the same mutualist poll

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Anna Dornhaus @dornhaus.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

The classic role of models in physics is to derive predictions from an already-quantitative hypothesis. This is NOT what most models in biology do! In biology, models far more often prove a general principle that was not intuitive from a verbal hypothesis alone.

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Anna Dornhaus @dornhaus.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Preprint: What good is modeling? Introducing biology students to theory - arxiv.org/abs/2604.13344 - how to teach and think about what modeling contributes to science. How does it fit into the scientific method? This is often misunderstood.

arxiv.org

What good is modeling? Introducing biology students to theory

Theory and empirical science should be in constant dialogue, but often find it hard to understand one another. Here we describe a graduate-level university course we developed to improve matters. The ...

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Reposted by Anna Dornhaus

Chinmay Hemant Joshi @chjoshi.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Paper alert 🚨🐜! Fire ant foraging looks remarkably robust until you perturb their communication. @dornhaus.bsky.social and I tested how fire ants respond to disruptions in pheromone trail communication during foraging. More in the thread below 🧵(1/6). link.springer.com/article/10.1...

link.springer.com

Persist or give up? Fire ants motivated to search for a high-quality food source even if they don’t know how to find it - Insectes Sociaux

Insectes Sociaux - Finding resources for the colony is one of the most difficult and risky tasks for a social insect worker. A worker on a foraging trip can face a number of challenges, including...

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Reposted by Anna Dornhaus

Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Do primate brains and social insect colonies make decisions in similar ways? As shown in this @royalsocietypublishing.org paper, both share competing populations that accumulate evidence until a threshold is reached. @jordipinero.bsky.social @drmichaellevin.bsky.social @dornhaus.bsky.social

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Reposted by Anna Dornhaus

Animal Behaviour Live @animalbehaviour.live · 14/04/2026

📣SEMINAR SERIES 2026📣 Our 1st seminar of this year ! 📆Tuesday 28th April 2026 at 2pm GMT on Youtube: Dr. Anna Dornhaus (@dornhaus.bsky.social) on “What we learned about the world from studying collective behavior: algorithms, replicators, and strong inference” 🐜 🔗 www.youtube.com/watch?v=oioL...

youtube.com

Seminar Series 2026: 1. Dr. Anna Dornhaus

YouTube video by Animal Behaviour Live

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Anna Dornhaus @dornhaus.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

@lovetheants.bsky.social convinced me to engage on social media again. So, here. What starter packs should I follow? I already followed her myrmecologists group.

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Anna Dornhaus @dornhaus.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

I am at ESA! I would love to talk to students interested in coming to lovely Arizona for work on collective behavior, ant or bee cognition, or similar topics! www.annadornhaus.net

annadornhaus.net

Dornhaus Lab

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Anna Dornhaus @dornhaus.bsky.social · 09/09/2023

Hello all! Just made my account. Where are my peeps? #arizona #entomology #bees #science

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