iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

In a future where AI scientists run their own labs, Jonathon Keats and I argue they should learn from more than human minds. Our new essay in @nautil.us asks: What can ants, pigeons, and chimpanzees teach AI about doing better science? nautil.us/a-natural-so...

nautil.us

A Natural Solution to the Replication Crisis in Science - Nautilus

Dear scientists: Follow the ants

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Boulder friends: if you're in town, come see Yasmine Meroz's talk on how plants sense, compute, and behave with no brain or nervous system! Thu 7/23, 2-3pm, JSCBB A104 @ CU Boulder. All welcome 🌻 @merozlab.bsky.social

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Earth Species Project (ESP) @earthspecies.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Fireflies are best known for their glowing displays, but those flashes are also a communication system. Research from @oritpeleg.bsky.social's lab is helping uncover how these signals are coordinated across groups and how synchronized displays emerge. 🔗 Learn more: www.peleglab.com 📸 Nolan Bonnie

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Fun to play a small part in this new work led by Tsevi Beatus and team: when the lights go off, honeybees simply stop flying and fall! (unlike flies and mosquitoes, which pull off smart maneuvers) Thanks to Richard Terrile in our lab for turning the lights off on bees, in the name of science 🐝🪰🦟

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

I’m honored to join the Scouts of the Hypothesis Fund @hypothesisfund.bsky.social and help bring beautiful, hard-to-categorize, and easy-to-underestimate biological questions to the fore. Excited for this!

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Hypothesis Fund @hypothesisfund.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

👋 Meet #HFScout Orit Peleg (@oritpeleg.bsky.social), trained as a physicist + computer scientist whose research combines theory, computation, experiments, & field biology to study how groups of organisms sense, decide, & build together, e.g. the fascinating collective behavior of honeybees🐝. 1/

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Honeybee swarms do not come together and fall apart in the same way 🐝 In this new preprint led by Danielle Chase, we report how to trick swarms to repeatedly assemble and disassemble in front of our cameras, while tracking individual bees in 3D! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Bing Wen Brunton @bingbrunton.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Some of you saw a preview of this result at my Cosyne talk last week. We may have had too much fun working on this worm-fly model 🤣🤓🤣 (The digital sphinx may be imagery, but the lessons are real.)

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University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) @colorado.edu · 16/03/2026

How do fireflies synchronize their magical light shows? BioFrontiers Institute researcher Orit Peleg will present her findings on the mathematical rules behind firefly synchrony at the American Physical Society’s 2026 Global Physics Summit on March 16. #APSSummit26 bit.ly/4ru1L8e

bit.ly

In a South Carolina swamp, researchers uncover secrets of firefly synchrony

A new study shows how fireflies speed up or slow down their flashing to sync up with other insects, creating a beautiful and other-wordly light show.

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

Nicole! Yes please! You’re welcome anytime ❤️

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Natalie Shapira @natalieshapira.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

In this amazing multidisciplinary collaboration, we report our early experience with the @openclaw-x.bsky.social ->

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Rebecca R Helm @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

Timeline cleans with snowflake-sized baby lagoon jellyfish. . 🎥 jelliesfarm www.instagram.com/jelliesfarm?...

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

✨ New preprint from the lab on firefly synchronization, led by Owen Martin (freshly Dr. Martin!), with Nataliya Nechyporenko and Kaushik Jayaram. Our measured firefly phase-response curves reveal excitatory and inhibitory timing rules that facilitate population synchrony ✨ doi.org/10.64898/202...

Diagram of field LED perturbations of fireflies, showing entrainment patterns and a phase response curve linking phase delay/advance to relative timing.

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EMBL Events @events.embl.org · 09/01/2026

⏰ Deadline extension for #EESBioOsc ⏰ You now have until 14 January to submit your abstract for the EMBO | EMBL Symposium 'Biological oscillators: rhythms and synchronisation across scales'! 👉 s.embl.org/ees26-04-bl

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Andrew Straw @andrewstraw.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

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... 1/9

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Boulder friends: if you’re into animal behavior or vision, come to The Language of Light: Bioluminescence in the Deep Sea with Sönke Johnsen (Duke)! Fri Nov 14, 4-5:30 pm, Benson Earth Sciences Auditorium, Room 180. Reception 5:30-6:30 at the Earth Sciences & Map Library Free and open to all!

Event flyer for ‘The Language of Light: Bioluminescence in the Deep Sea.’ Details: Friday, Nov 14, 4:00 to 5:30 pm, Benson Earth Sciences Auditorium, Room 180. Speaker: Sönke Johnsen, Owens Distinguished Professor, Duke University. Reception 5:30 to 6:30 pm at the Earth Sciences & Map Library. Free, open to the public

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

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Network Science Institute @nunetsi.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

#NetSI 's first-year PhD student Chethan Kavaraganahalli Prasanna co-authored a study with Univ. of Colorado Boulder featured in the NYT and published in PLOS Biology (shorturl.at/iHeXb)! www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/s...

nytimes.com

Even on a Rough Construction Site, Honeybees Figure It Out

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PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 27/08/2025

How do #honeybees adapt their comb-building to different spatial constraints? A new study from @oritpeleg.bsky.social &co uses 3D printed panels and X-ray microscopy to reveal the existence of three distinct construction modes, from tilting cells to building complex 3D structures.🧪 plos.io/4n1g6Hs

plos.io

Honeybees adapt to a range of comb cell sizes by merging, tilting, and layering their construction

Honeybees often need to build their comb under conditions that prevent a regular hexagonal lattice. This study uses 3D printed panels and X-ray microscopy to explore their adaptive process when differ...

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

New paper in PLOS Biology: as we raise the difficulty of our 3D printed puzzles, bees keep landing on combs with ever stranger hexagonal order! 🐝 Led by the brilliant Golnar Gharooni Fard, in collaboration with CK Prasanna & FL Jiménez journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Close-up of experimental honeycombs built after a challenging 3D printed setup, showing mostly hexagonal cells.

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

More on collective behavior: Our new Annual Review of Biophysics piece - with the stellar Danielle Chase - explores how animals sense, share information, and make group decisions. In honeybees and beyond 🐝 www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Title page of the review article 'The Physics of Sensing and Decision-Making by Animal Groups' by Danielle L. Chase and Orit Peleg in Annual Review of Biophysics. Includes illustrations of collective behavior in honeybees: a diagram showing uncommitted scout bees transitioning through decision-making to choose between two nest sites; a honeybee on a honeycomb cell; a cluster of bees hanging from a branch; and a schematic of bees forming a layered cluster.

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wbialek.bsky.social @wbialek.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

It was an honor to write this, but also great fun. A chance to look back at the classics, and think about the path forward. #Physics is a beautiful human endeavor. journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...

journals.aps.org

Emergence of Brains

This review traces how ideas from statistical physics evolved into foundational models of neural computation, shaping modern AI and culminating in the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

We didn’t forget the tangled worms! They make an appearance in our Annual Review of Biophysics piece (with another stellar postdoc, Danielle Chase), where we discuss how blackworms weave themselves into living soft matter and the resilience that brings: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... ❤️🪱

annualreviews.org

The Physics of Sensing and Decision-Making by Animal Groups | Annual Reviews

To ensure survival and reproduction, individual animals navigating the world must regularly sense their surroundings and use this information for important decision-making. The same is true for animal...

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

New review in PRX Life, where we propose a tangibility scale for the physics of social interactions, and highlight a few tangible examples - from dead fish “swimming” to efficient schooling, warm penguin huddles, and dry ant rafts. Written with the brilliant Chantal Nguyen 🐟🐧🐜 tinyurl.com/naet5tdh

Three‑row table linking scales: fish, penguin, ant. Each row shows an individual silhouette, a pair‑level interaction image, and the emergent collective - schooling fish, penguin huddle, and an ant raft.

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Jason GRIZZLED Bittel @bittelmethis.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Fireflies are still generally declining, & light pollution is one big reason why, but a few species are also carrying on in places that are bathed in artificial light. Which is pretty wild! Featuring Sriram Murali's excellent photography! 🧪 www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

nationalgeographic.com

Fireflies are flourishing in places you wouldn't expect

Pesticides, habitat loss, and light pollution are threatening firefly populations worldwide, but even in urban areas, some lightning bugs continue to shine.

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Colossal @thisiscolossal.com · 14/07/2025

Nearly a century before the invention of the microscope and even longer before entomology became a field of research, Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1600) devoted himself to studying the natural world. He's thought to have created the first compendium of its kind.

thisiscolossal.com

The 16th-Century Artist Who Created the First Compendium of Insect Drawings

Before the invention of the microscope and the field of entomology emerged, Joris Hoefnagel devoted himself to the natural world.

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

📣 We're on the lookout for a creative postdoc with strong computational skills! Be the go-to person in the lab for building simple but powerful simulations that test wild ideas on biological rythems: from daily cycles of mussel groups at deep sea, to firefly flash synchronization! More info below👇

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

The longer the better, but even just a few nights would be great 🙏

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

Help us record firefly flashes! 👇🙏

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Hello hello #complexity and #emergence people. I'm getting a complexity+emergence (broadly defined) starter pack going. I've focused on active accounts that often make original posts (not just reposts) and have at least a few thousand followers. Inclusion is not endorsement. go.bsky.app/BLuVyWj

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INSTAAR @instaar.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Decoding 🌟 firefly communication & conservation in Colorado Join us for a *free* evening talk by @oritpeleg.bsky.social at the Mountain Research Station (run by @colorado.edu + INSTAAR): 🗓 Wed Jun 18th 🕖 7:00 pm 📍 Near Ward CO 🔗 calendar.colorado.edu/event/orit-p...

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Nautilus Magazine @nautil.us · 04/05/2025

Among the thousands of firefly species in the world, only a handful blink in sync. While both male and female fireflies flash, only the males synchronize. 🧪

nautil.us

The Mathematical Mysteries of Fireflies

What blinking bugs reveal about synchrony in the universe

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

In these chaotic times, I’ve been grounding myself in my mentees’ successes: here’s a beautiful story by PhD candidate Owen Martin (@lepurplemartin.bsky.social) on Colorado’s fireflies 🌟✨ theconversation.com/fleeting-fir...

theconversation.com

Fleeting fireflies illuminate Colorado summer nights − and researchers are watching

New research uses firefly flashing patterns to identify species and what they’re communicating.

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

That’s like, your opinion, man

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Auke-Florian 🪹 @aukeflorian.nl · 09/04/2025

NEW PAPER, JUST OUT! 👀 Insects from the '70s and '80s were already collecting microplastic, decades before the term microplastic even existed. 🤯 A thread on the surprising history of this pollutant and the incredible insect larvae that helped us uncover it. 🐛 Let's dive in! 🧵👇 1/x

Lead author Auke-Florian Hiemstra holds the oldest known caddisfly casing containing microplastic, dating to 1971. Photo: Liselotte Rambonnet.

A caddisfly casing with pieces of blue microplastic, dating 1986. Photo: Auke-Florian Hiemstra

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Shashank Shekhar lab @sshekhr.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

📢Excited to share our new paper in Nature Physics @naturephysics.bsky.social: Cooperative hydrodynamics accompany multicellular-like colonial organization in the unicellular Stentor! How do single-celled organisms benefit from teamwork? Let’s dive in! #Multicellularity nature.com/articles/s41...?

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Owen Martin @lepurplemartin.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Great to see my work and the work of my advisor @oritpeleg.bsky.social featured by one of my media heroes @zefrank.bsky.social ! Alongside my conservation heroes Candace and Richard from the @xercessociety.bsky.social! Let’s get talking about firefly conservation www.youtube.com/watch?v=czt_...

youtube.com

True Facts: Where Have All The Fireflies Gone!

YouTube video by Ze Frank

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