Adria LeBoeuf
@adriatica.bsky.social
I study #socialfluids. Ponderer of the #behavior of myself & other organisms. #SocialInsects / #DistributedMetabolism / #CollectiveBehavior / #CompBio Assoc. Prof @ University of Cambridge; previously Fribourg, Weizmann, Lausanne, Rockefeller, UCSB.
Pinned
Adria LeBoeuf
@adriatica.bsky.social
· Feb 16
How do complex social behaviors evolve and shape species' success? Here doi.org/10.1038/s420... we reveal how a key social behavior in ants - mouth-to-mouth food sharing #trophallaxis - emerged as ants opportunistically exploited new ecological niches as terrestrial environments changed.
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
Analysis of the DNA and proteins of a range of animals has revealed that sperm’s molecular toolkit arose in our single-celled ancestors, perhaps more than a billion years ago
Sperm's evolutionary origins go back before multicellular animals
Analysis of the DNA and proteins of a range of animals has revealed that sperm’s molecular toolkit arose in our single-celled ancestors, perhaps more than a billion years ago
www.newscientist.com
November 24, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Analysis of the DNA and proteins of a range of animals has revealed that sperm’s molecular toolkit arose in our single-celled ancestors, perhaps more than a billion years ago
Our preprint doi.org/10.1101/2025... getting media coverage (!)
November 24, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Our preprint doi.org/10.1101/2025... getting media coverage (!)
I relied on corporations announcements of Black Friday to figure out when Thanksgiving would be, and it turns out they were a week off, and consequently, I’m celebrating Thanksgiving the weekend before rather than the weekend after… still yummy
November 22, 2025 at 9:48 PM
I relied on corporations announcements of Black Friday to figure out when Thanksgiving would be, and it turns out they were a week off, and consequently, I’m celebrating Thanksgiving the weekend before rather than the weekend after… still yummy
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
There once was a man from Tennessee
Who went on a criminal spree
To commit his crimes
He wrote them in rhymes
And gave them to ChatGPT
Who went on a criminal spree
To commit his crimes
He wrote them in rhymes
And gave them to ChatGPT
Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..."
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
November 22, 2025 at 8:46 AM
There once was a man from Tennessee
Who went on a criminal spree
To commit his crimes
He wrote them in rhymes
And gave them to ChatGPT
Who went on a criminal spree
To commit his crimes
He wrote them in rhymes
And gave them to ChatGPT
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
We just released a new major version of TrackMate (v8), the cell and organelle tracking plugin of Fiji.
It ships many new features, detailed below, but that are articulated around the following:
It ships many new features, detailed below, but that are articulated around the following:
November 20, 2025 at 11:42 AM
We just released a new major version of TrackMate (v8), the cell and organelle tracking plugin of Fiji.
It ships many new features, detailed below, but that are articulated around the following:
It ships many new features, detailed below, but that are articulated around the following:
Had a great visit to @sussexneuro.bsky.social and @neurofishh.bsky.social today. Such a pleasure to chat with a bunch of clever and interesting folks, see a menagerie of interesting creatures and see the sea.
November 17, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Had a great visit to @sussexneuro.bsky.social and @neurofishh.bsky.social today. Such a pleasure to chat with a bunch of clever and interesting folks, see a menagerie of interesting creatures and see the sea.
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
This is such a cool study. A parasitic ant queen tricks worker ants into murdering their own queen, so the parasite can take over the colony.
This parasitic ant tricks workers into committing matricide
Newly mated parasitic queen ants invade colonies and spray their victims with a chemical irritant that provokes the workers to kill their mother.
www.sciencenews.org
November 17, 2025 at 5:43 PM
This is such a cool study. A parasitic ant queen tricks worker ants into murdering their own queen, so the parasite can take over the colony.
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
I am bewildered that this labour of Sisyphus is being carried out by volunteers, while Southern Water, which has admitted responsibility for the catastrophe, is doing nothing to remediate it.
‘We feel we’re fighting a losing battle’: the race to remove millions of plastic beads from Camber Sands
A huge cleanup effort has seen volunteers working to remove beads by hand and machine. They can only wait and see the extent of damage to wildlife and dune habitat
www.theguardian.com
November 15, 2025 at 8:19 AM
I am bewildered that this labour of Sisyphus is being carried out by volunteers, while Southern Water, which has admitted responsibility for the catastrophe, is doing nothing to remediate it.
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
![[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.]
JANET:
Ugh...
LIZ:
What's up?
JANET:
I am so bored of cooking peas!
LIZ:
Have you tried...
AI peas?
JANET:
AI peas?
LIZ:
They're peas with AI!
[Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI].
LIZ:
Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas
JANET:
What
LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines]
Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas?
[Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it]
LIZ:
Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine
[Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas]
LIZ:
With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas!
JANET:
What
LIZ:
Shut up
LIZ:
Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow
From opening the bag of peas
to boiling the peas
to eating the peas
To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means.
JANET:
Is it really necessary to-
LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]:
THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET
[Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan:
AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas.
[Ends]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4m3we4apbjayclzcnhwe3pfp/bafkreiayqa37f7kik7l7s7fbtfp2sir5ckb662ry2lylinyjrfa2rkvvka@jpeg)
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
November 13, 2025 at 7:23 PM
It was a pleasure to speak today at an event on Reproduction and Sustainability organized by @cambridgezero.bsky.social and @cam-repro.bsky.social so many fascinating talks across so many disciplines! I spoke about this @socialtransfernet.bsky.social project: doi.org/10.32942/X2C...
The role of socially transferred materials in translating and mediating the effects of global change
doi.org
November 13, 2025 at 5:32 PM
It was a pleasure to speak today at an event on Reproduction and Sustainability organized by @cambridgezero.bsky.social and @cam-repro.bsky.social so many fascinating talks across so many disciplines! I spoke about this @socialtransfernet.bsky.social project: doi.org/10.32942/X2C...
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
Come and join us here in Cambridge! Applications open for a new faculty position, for a researcher in computational and/or theoretical biology, based jointly in Genetics and Mathematics. Happy to answer questions about research, teaching and working here.
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/faculty...
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/faculty...
Faculty Position in Computational Biology
Applications are invited for an Assistant/ Associate Professorship in Computational Biology to commence on 1 April 2026 or shortly thereafter. This is a joint post between the Department of Applied
www.cam.ac.uk
November 11, 2025 at 9:05 PM
Come and join us here in Cambridge! Applications open for a new faculty position, for a researcher in computational and/or theoretical biology, based jointly in Genetics and Mathematics. Happy to answer questions about research, teaching and working here.
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/faculty...
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/faculty...
Thrilled to have been awarded a BBSRC grant to research metabolic cooperation between bodies (in ants). Stay tuned for open positions!
November 10, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Thrilled to have been awarded a BBSRC grant to research metabolic cooperation between bodies (in ants). Stay tuned for open positions!
As a Californian abroad I still have strong feels about the state of the US. So glad that there was a massive left leaning sweep across CA, NYC, NJ, VA. Maybe my CA vote will finally have a little more power.
November 5, 2025 at 9:03 AM
As a Californian abroad I still have strong feels about the state of the US. So glad that there was a massive left leaning sweep across CA, NYC, NJ, VA. Maybe my CA vote will finally have a little more power.
I went as an AI hallucination this year. I actually felt very dated because I was trying to get the LLMs to build the messed up text characteristic of a year or so ago and they won’t do it anymore!
November 1, 2025 at 9:26 PM
I went as an AI hallucination this year. I actually felt very dated because I was trying to get the LLMs to build the messed up text characteristic of a year or so ago and they won’t do it anymore!
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
so…bot farms.
Just thinking back to the last 9 years and all the hearings and investigations into the ways platforms like FB could be manipulated, and into how these platforms were manipulating their own algos: in the absence of good regulation/enforcement, that turned out to be just R&D
Just thinking back to the last 9 years and all the hearings and investigations into the ways platforms like FB could be manipulated, and into how these platforms were manipulating their own algos: in the absence of good regulation/enforcement, that turned out to be just R&D
A new startup backed by one of the biggest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), is building a service that allows clients to “orchestrate actions on thousands of social accounts through both bulk content creation and deployment.”
a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate Social Media as a Service
Andreessen Horowitz is funding a company that clearly violates the inauthentic behavior policies of every major social media platform.
www.404media.co
October 25, 2025 at 11:51 AM
so…bot farms.
Just thinking back to the last 9 years and all the hearings and investigations into the ways platforms like FB could be manipulated, and into how these platforms were manipulating their own algos: in the absence of good regulation/enforcement, that turned out to be just R&D
Just thinking back to the last 9 years and all the hearings and investigations into the ways platforms like FB could be manipulated, and into how these platforms were manipulating their own algos: in the absence of good regulation/enforcement, that turned out to be just R&D
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
Gorillas likely experience menopause, according to an analysis of over 30 years of data from wild mountain gorillas in Uganda, which shows that females can live for a decade or more after their last baby. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/kxyz50Xf1ER
October 20, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Gorillas likely experience menopause, according to an analysis of over 30 years of data from wild mountain gorillas in Uganda, which shows that females can live for a decade or more after their last baby. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/kxyz50Xf1ER
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
“Ultimately, the collective strategy of AI companies threatens to deskill precisely those people who are essential for society to function(…) automation of knowledge and culture by private companies is a worrying prospect – conjuring dystopian and outright fascistic scenarios.” — @olivia.science
AI Is Hollowing Out Higher Education
Olivia Guest & Iris van Rooij urge teachers and scholars to reject tools that commodify learning, deskill students, and promote illiteracy.
www.project-syndicate.org
October 17, 2025 at 10:51 PM
“Ultimately, the collective strategy of AI companies threatens to deskill precisely those people who are essential for society to function(…) automation of knowledge and culture by private companies is a worrying prospect – conjuring dystopian and outright fascistic scenarios.” — @olivia.science
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
This video shows mouse sperm entering a zebrafish egg.
Don’t worry, scientists aren’t out making mousefish. This fertility research actually demonstrates that mechanisms guiding sperm toward eggs may be shared across distant species.
buff.ly/MJ1ILD1
Don’t worry, scientists aren’t out making mousefish. This fertility research actually demonstrates that mechanisms guiding sperm toward eggs may be shared across distant species.
buff.ly/MJ1ILD1
October 17, 2025 at 8:02 PM
This video shows mouse sperm entering a zebrafish egg.
Don’t worry, scientists aren’t out making mousefish. This fertility research actually demonstrates that mechanisms guiding sperm toward eggs may be shared across distant species.
buff.ly/MJ1ILD1
Don’t worry, scientists aren’t out making mousefish. This fertility research actually demonstrates that mechanisms guiding sperm toward eggs may be shared across distant species.
buff.ly/MJ1ILD1
Gary Larson is making new cartoons ! www.thefarside.com/new-stuff/
New Work by Gary Larson | TheFarSide.com
Get an exclusive look at brand new cartoons and artwork from cartoonist Gary Larson, creator of the iconic comic strip The Far Side®.
www.thefarside.com
October 18, 2025 at 9:02 AM
Gary Larson is making new cartoons ! www.thefarside.com/new-stuff/
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
Interesting paper quantifying behavioural interactions across 5 naked mole-rat colonies over time: learn more about the strong social bonds of breeders & more here www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Quantitative and systematic behavioral profiling reveals social complexity in eusocial naked mole-rats
Automated tracking in naked mole-rats reveals behavioral specificity of breeders and diversity of nonbreeders in a colony.
www.science.org
October 12, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Interesting paper quantifying behavioural interactions across 5 naked mole-rat colonies over time: learn more about the strong social bonds of breeders & more here www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
I’m thrilled to share my postdoc work and the first paper from the McKinley Lab! 🎉
@karalmckinley.bsky.social
We built the first transgenic model of menstruation in mice.
We used it to uncover how the endometrium organizes and sheds during menstruation. 🧪
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵
@karalmckinley.bsky.social
We built the first transgenic model of menstruation in mice.
We used it to uncover how the endometrium organizes and sheds during menstruation. 🧪
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵
Induction of menstruation in mice reveals the regulation of menstrual shedding
During menstruation, an inner layer of the endometrium is selectively shed, while an outer, progenitor-containing layer is preserved to support repeated regeneration. Progress in understanding this co...
www.biorxiv.org
October 10, 2025 at 12:50 PM
I’m thrilled to share my postdoc work and the first paper from the McKinley Lab! 🎉
@karalmckinley.bsky.social
We built the first transgenic model of menstruation in mice.
We used it to uncover how the endometrium organizes and sheds during menstruation. 🧪
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵
@karalmckinley.bsky.social
We built the first transgenic model of menstruation in mice.
We used it to uncover how the endometrium organizes and sheds during menstruation. 🧪
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵
These are hilarious.
Here are your 10 -essential- AI prompts for academics ... make your life easy with help from @profserious.bsky.social profserious.substack.com/p/10-ai-prom...
10 AI Prompts for Academics
making those hard jobs a little easier ...
profserious.substack.com
October 5, 2025 at 8:51 AM
These are hilarious.
“The path to a better Amazon doesn’t lie through consumer activism, or appeals to the its conscience. Corporations, being artificial, immortal colony-organisms that use humans as their inconvenient gut flora, do not have consciences to appeal to.”
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?
Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and ...
www.theguardian.com
October 5, 2025 at 7:01 AM
“The path to a better Amazon doesn’t lie through consumer activism, or appeals to the its conscience. Corporations, being artificial, immortal colony-organisms that use humans as their inconvenient gut flora, do not have consciences to appeal to.”
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Reposted by Adria LeBoeuf
Start independent research at the JIC with us 👇.
Really interested in finding those with an interest in structural biology and biochemistry of plants and microbes.
Please do get in touch by email if you'd like to know more 👍
Really interested in finding those with an interest in structural biology and biochemistry of plants and microbes.
Please do get in touch by email if you'd like to know more 👍
VACANCY - Independent research fellowships leading to tenured positions
We’re inviting applications from outstanding researchers who either hold, or wish to apply for, Independent Research Fellowships.
APPLICATION DEADLINE: 10 November 2025
Click here to apply: jic.link/Fellows
We’re inviting applications from outstanding researchers who either hold, or wish to apply for, Independent Research Fellowships.
APPLICATION DEADLINE: 10 November 2025
Click here to apply: jic.link/Fellows
October 3, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Start independent research at the JIC with us 👇.
Really interested in finding those with an interest in structural biology and biochemistry of plants and microbes.
Please do get in touch by email if you'd like to know more 👍
Really interested in finding those with an interest in structural biology and biochemistry of plants and microbes.
Please do get in touch by email if you'd like to know more 👍