News

I am currently on sabbatical as part of a syngenomics focus group at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Berlin Institute of Advanced Studies).

(me with Mike Wade, Jason Wolf, and Judie Bronstein)

Michael led a study on the transcriptomic basis and evolution of the pharaoh ant “social interactome”, i.e. the set of genes expressed in interacting worker nurses and developing larvae that affects larval development, which is now available on bioRxiv .

Michael led a study on the genomic basis of the convergent evolution of reproductive caste and worker age polyethism in honey bees and pharaoh ants, which is now available on bioRxiv: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/10/26/454645 .

Our previous manuscripts on bioRxiv have now been published!

Justin, Michael, Adrian, and Ben have submitted a manuscript showing behavioral and transcriptomic specialization of pharaoh ant nurses based on the age of larvae they feed: https://doi.org/10.1101/218834.

Michael and Jessica have submitted a manuscript showing how pharaoh ant colonies regulate caste and colony demography by culling sexual brood: https://doi.org/10.1101/211573

Our paper ” Genomic signature of kin selection in an ant with obligately sterile workers” is finally accepted at Molecular Biology and Evolution!

Michael’s first paper in the lab and the first from a PhD student in the lab!

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00040-016-0501-3

New paper in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, building on previous population genetic models to describe how combinations of sex-limited expression and diverse fitness effects (direct, parental, sib, offspring) are expected to affect rates of molecular evolution.

https://news.upenn.edu/news/penn-s-timothy-linksvayer-ants-are-model-complex-societies