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.

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.

Extended deadline May 7th!

Hooray! From Idea (forever ago) to workshop funding (2020) to [pandemic (2020) to] actual workshop (2021) to paper writing and submission (mid 2022) to acceptance (late 2022) to official publication (2023)!

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2022.11.010

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!

Dear Friends and colleagues, I am thrilled to announce some #bignews ! The @social_fluids lab is moving to @CamZoology at @Cambridge_Uni where I’ll be taking up an Assoc. Prof position in Jan 2024. n1/6 pic.twitter.com/yx0iy4ZCxn

— @Adria@mstdn.science aka Adria LeBoeuf (@adriaexists) April 17, 2023

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!

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!!

Following from the HFSP grant, we are now hiring for this awesome project. To get an idea of where this project is going, watch this talk: https://youtu.be/dyqAm9_ibjQ

Last weekend Adria gave a talk about her inter- and transdisciplinary experiences for the Swiss Young Academy’s retreat.

Coming out at just about the same time is a wonderful article by Juliette Vuille about Adria’s multi-disciplinary approach and our recent HFSP funding: https://www.unifr.ch/researcher/en/events/news/27402/

Thank you to Christian Doninelli of Unifr for this lovely video about what we do.

…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.

Wow! Overwhelmed with the wonderful response.

eLife / The Naked Scientist podcast: https://elifesciences.org/podcast/episode78#1378

CBC’s Quirks and Quarks: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-51/clip/15883779

RTS’s CQFD (en francais): https://pages.rts.ch/la-1ere/programmes/cqfd/18-11-2021#12616330

Dutch news radio: https://www.bnr.nl/podcast/wetenschap-vandaag/10459485/in-elkaars-mond-spugen-is-voor-mieren-van-levensbelang

Print/web pieces:

Natural History Museum (UK): https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2021/november/ants-swap-spit-to-help-them-live-for-longer.html

LiveScience: https://www.livescience.com/ants-vomit-to-form-social-bonds

CBC: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/dec-11-sounds-of-a-coral-reef-the-message-in-young-blood-ants-communicate-with-vomit-and-more-1.6280034/ants-share-vomit-to-feed-each-other-and-communicate-within-the-colony-1.6280040

The Swaddle: https://theswaddle.com/ants-kiss-for-the-benefit-of-their-communities-finds-study/

The Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10229651/Carpenter-ants-slobbery-KISSES-exchange-food-important-proteins-spit.html

and many more.

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.

Lab Between Spaces from Robbie I'Anson Price on Vimeo.

The first research paper of the lab is out in eLife! The official press release will come in mid November. We are thrilled! We had a lovely apero as the fall descended, celebrating the paper, the graduation of our two wonderful Master Students, Kader Varli and Nicole Andreoli, and the handing over of the machinery of the tracking system (thanks Emmanuel Gendre!)

This spring we had three super Bachelor students join the Social fluids Lab for their Bachelor’s theses, Romy Leemann, Laurence Affolter and Bruno Mondragon.

It was great having them join us for a few months, each with cool projects!

Adria happened upon an exceptionally large myrmicine down by the Sarine and a team from the SFL went in to investigate further. Result? Manica rubida!

Huge thanks to Romy for organizing this super fun outing!

In May we had the pleasure of welcoming not one, but two awesome postdocs, Haruna Fujioka from Japan and Matteo Negroni from France. Haruna came to us with a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science postdoctoral fellowship and she’s researching the evolution of trophallaxis along with eusociality. Matteo is working on unraveling distributed metabolism in ant colonies.

A preprint for the first research paper of the lab is now on bioRxiv and we are very excited about it.

Dynamic Variation in a Socially Exchanged Fluid Indicates a Role in the Regulation of Ant Colony Development and Maturation

SM Hakala, M-P Meurville, M Stumpe, AC LeBoeuf

https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.28.428590

Here’s a twitter thread on the story.

New preprint! In ant colonies, proteins circulated in the mouth-to-mouth food transfer network of #trophallaxis differentiate between colony life stages and castes @SanjaHakala @Marie_Meurville M Stumpe @adriaexists #socialfluids #ants #behavior #evolution

Young and mature colonies pass around different proteins: Proteins involved in direct carbohydrate processing are central for rapid growth in young colonies. Mature colonies circulate nutrient storage proteins needed to produce specialized workers and sexuals #castedetermination

Excitingly, anti-aging proteins (like superoxide dismutase) are circulated across colonies. If the colony distributes the costs of aging to the whole network, it would explain how ant queens escape the fecundity-longevity trade-off (!) #lifespan  #lifehistory

Different ‘tissues’ have different molecular tasks: nurses have more signatures of extracellular vesicles and anti-aging proteins. Many of these socially-transmitted proteins could function as hormones that act over the superorganism to control its life cycle! #socialphysiology

We’re excited to discuss these topics further, and get feedback on the preprint, either here or at #cshlinsect virtual conference at the end of March, where @adriaexists will present the results!

Marie-Pierre and Adria wrote this giant review about trophallaxis, in what contexts it occurs, who does it and the big ‘why,’ why did it evolve. Please enjoy it, complete with the lovely figures (thanks Emile)!

There’s a lovely blog post interview with Marie-Pierre about the paper that Myrmecological News did.

Along with the paper we also put out a database that we’ll update about which species do and don’t engage in trophallaxis. Please write to us if you have any species to contribute!