Unruly larvae: how social transfers drove social complexity in ants

Arthur’s paper finally published!

This was a real thrill to do. Arthur set out on his master’s internship to catalogue queen:worker dimorphism based on antweb/antcat photos. Then we started trying to link up these patterns to trophallaxis and other traits, but something was missing. It was clear that dimorphism had to be built in the larvae, but there are so few data on how ant larvae are fed! What to do? Arthur came up with a great idea, to use the work of Wheeler and Wheeler to classify larvae according to active and passive features. This quantitative assessment of larval passiveness allowed us to push the study of dimorphism beyond the classic but non-mechanistic hypotheses around colony size and social complexity into the more mechanistic realm of socially transferred materials.

We thank PNAS and especially Tim Linksvayer putting together the news and views piece!

Adria LeBoeuf
Trophallaxis and ant evolution: Social fluids drove diversification

Marie-Pierre’s paper was finally published!

Super proud of this work that began as some conversations over coffee with Daniele Silvestro outside our link annex off the Biology Department in Fribourg. This was the lab’s first foray into comparative phylogenetic methods and we are hooked. Such an incredible set of tools for this era and for the incredible diversity of ants.

To me (Adria) the main take-aways of this paper are that:

  1. Evolution of trophallaxis increased net diversification. Checked by two methods, consistent. This basically means once you gain trophallaxis, more speciations and extinctions.

  2. Reproductive conflict needs to be somewhat resolved for ants to be wiling to share between adults. I think this is really exciting. It also led us down several rabbit holes. Depending on priors and parameters of ASRs we can get different results about the reproductive potential of workers in the ancestors of all ants, despite the huge bias against the possibility of worker totipotency. From the perspective of major evolutionary transitions in individuality, reduction in reproductive potential should be a one-way street. Together, these lead to the exciting possibility that not all ants are superorganisms.

  3. Trophallaxis evolution in ants is a great system to study the evolution of a social transfer and its repercussions!

Adria LeBoeuf
Lorentz Meeting on Socially Transferred Materials
Lorentz Meeting on Socially Transferred Materials

In mid-November about 25 people got together in Leiden to talk about socially transferred materials for a week.

We separated into three teams #milcus, #principles and #environment. Watch this space for the three amazing papers that will be the fruits of our labor!

Adria LeBoeufconference, STM, STN
Marie-Pierre's defense, Farewell Fribourg, and the move to Cambridge

It is very exciting times in the Social Fluids lab these days.

We have our first PhD!! Marie-Pierre passed her private defense this week and will soon be having her public defense (Dec 7th! message us if you want the zoom link!).

We are very excited to be moving to Cambridge within the next month or so! In order to open new doors, some need to close.

We are wrapping up many projects: Hugo is running tracking experiments daily. We are pushing to get MP’s macroevolution paper resubmitted and Arthurs dimorphism paper resubmitted. Yuqi is sending off samples for analysis for the grand MetaAnts project. Matteo just had his hand-feeding paper accepted. The second tracking rig and lighting box will soon be in our hands thanks to Emmanuel Gendre and Markus Andrey. The long running Beetle manuscript is approaching submission. Action in all corners!

We will be having our farewell party on Dec 5th to say goodbye to our Swiss colleagues. Message if you would like the details. It has been a great run here and we are sad to say farewell.

The lab canvas from our time in Fribourg. We managed to have aaaalllmost everyone sign their name and paint an ant to mark their time in the lab.

Adria LeBoeuf
Hiring a postdoc to join us in Cambridge and ideally a bit before!

More details here!


Seeking a Talented Postdoc in Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics to Explore Distributed Metabolism in Ant Colonies

We are excited to announce an opening for a talented and motivated postdoctoral researcher to join our team. This unique opportunity involves exploring distributed metabolism and the molecular mechanisms behind social exchanges in ant colonies.

Project Overview

Social insects offer intriguing insights into collaboration and the distribution of self across multiple individuals. Our project aims to investigate the social exchanges in ant colonies and the metabolic interplay between individuals.

Our research will combine behavioral observations with detailed molecular analyses of four ant species, representing different social feeding modes and evolutionary lineages. We will employ cutting-edge techniques, including proteomics, metabolomics, and advanced multi-omic data integration, to reconstruct metabolic networks and identify active pathways.

The Role

As a postdoctoral researcher in molecular biology and bioinformatics, you will play a crucial role in this innovative project. Your responsibilities will include:

  • Performing proteomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics on colony tissues and exchanged fluids

  • Genomic analyses of gene families of interest

  • Validating critical pathways with targeted experiments

This project presents an unparalleled opportunity to contribute to our understanding of social behavior, evolutionary biology, metabolism, and the physics of collective behavior. Your work will help elucidate the functional role of distributed metabolism, probe its evolution, and provide new tools for studying community-level metabolic interactions.

This two- to three-year position will be based at the University of Cambridge, with an initial 2-6 month research visit to the University of Fribourg for optimal knowledge transfer.

Qualifications

We are seeking a highly motivated candidate with a strong background in molecular biology and bioinformatics. The ideal candidate should possess:

  • A Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, Bioinformatics, or a related field

  • Proficiency in proteomics, trnascriptomics, metabolomics, and data analysis

  • Strong communication and collaboration skills

  • A passion for understanding social insect behavior and metabolism

Join Our Team

If you are excited about exploring the fascinating world of social insects and metabolic division of labor, we would love to hear from you. Apply now and help us unravel the mysteries of distributed metabolism in ant colonies.

Adria LeBoeuf
The LeBoeuf Lab of Social Fluids is moving to Cambridge!

In a thrilling turn of events, the lab will be moving to the University of Cambridge, Zoology Department, where Adria will take up an Associate Professor position. This will happen in the very start of 2024. We are very excited for this adventure!

Adria LeBoeuf
A spate of preprints!

Hold onto your hats because the social fluids lab members have been preprinting like wild!

In September we had Marie-Pierre Meurville ’s Macroevolution preprint: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.09.25.509371

and Haruna Fujioka’s pseudotrophallaxis preprint: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.09.13.507744

and then in December we had Arthur Matte’s dimorphism preprint: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.08.519655

and finally in early 2023 we had Matteo Negroni’s metabolic division of labour preprint: https://doi.org/10.32942/X26C7X

Glad to share these with you all!

Adria LeBoeuf
Preprint on Socially Transferred Materials is out!

Back in Nov 2021 Sanja Hakala and Adria LeBoeuf ran a workshop (funded by CUSO) on Social Exchanges in Biology. During those two days with an amazing set of speakers (Stu Wigby, Becky Kilner, Tim Linksvayer, Barbara Konig, Joris Koene, Katharina Gapp and Adria herself) and students, we tried to sketch out this new field of social transfers and socially transferred materials.

Once the workshop was done, we turned thoughts into action and wrote this perspective piece:

https://ecoevorxiv.org/9fm4p

We are in love with it. We hope you enjoy it and give us feedback!!

Adria LeBoeuf
Social Fluids Lab gets collaborative HFSP grant!

…to collaborate with Bas Teusink of VU Amsterdam and Brian L. Fisher of the California Academy of Sciences on a project doing multi-omic metabolic modeling of ant colonies!

We are so thrilled, honored, excited that this is going to become reality. It started as a weird dreamy idea that expanded, became collaborative, became more interdisciplinary, and has now actually become doable with a grant of ~$1.2 million.

Adria LeBoeuf
So much press for Hakala et al. 2021!
Adria LeBoeuf
Lab Between Spaces

In praise of breadth

The work we do is multidisciplinary. It is necessary but also makes things hard. This summer/fall with Robbie I’Anson Price we made this awesome film about the importance of supporting interdisciplinary research. It’s also an excellent intro into what we do.

Adria LeBoeuf