Shout out to the beekeepers who are kindly giving us access to their apiaries, and enabling these experiments. A PhD position is currently available in my lab (application deadline May 25th) but stay tuned for more openings in the near future.

Our first honeybee experiment is up and running! Proud of my team for their hard work to set up the lab over the past months. Ten months in and we have a functional lab, cutting-edge bee tracking systems, and SNSF funding. Importantly, we are having a good time despite the workload.

There are still a few days left to apply. If you are interested, send a single PDF file by May 25th. Please check the link for further details.

A PhD position is available in my lab at the University of Geneva to explore the interaction between gut microbes and behavior in social bees. Please share with potential candidates. Application deadline: May 25th. More info and how to apply: tinyurl.com/PhDmgbee

Excited to announce that I am joining the Department of Genetics and Evolution at the University of Geneva as a tenure-track Assistant Professor! We'll be exploring the gut-brain axis of insects. I am currently offering a fully-funded PhD position: drive.switch.ch/index.php/s/... Please RT #newPI

7/7 I take this opportunity to thank all co-authors for their help and insights; this was a huge amount of collective effort! Erik T. Frank, Tomas Kay, Lucie Kesner, Maverick Monié--Ibanes, Andrew Quinn (@andrewhq9.bsky.social), Thomas Schmitt, Laurent Keller, Philipp Engel (@pengellab.bsky.social)

6/7 Our findings impact the growing field of research on honeybee gut microbiota. They clarify that the gut microbiota has no influence on host weight or CHC profile, and stress the need for carefully controlled experimental designs when studying microbiomes in social organisms.

5/7 Why the differences? The rearing environment matters. Co-housed bees tend to converge in behavior and physiology and so spurious associations can emerge if rearing environments are not replicated sufficiently or accounted for analytically.

4/7 We also investigated gut microbiota effects on several physiological hallmarks of behavioral maturation and found no effects on any of the measured variables. Surprisingly, and in contrast to previous results, this included weight gain and CHC profile.

3/7 Using automated behavioral tracking, we discovered that the gut microbiota only subtly affects maturation. It accelerates the onset of foraging (the time at which bees first visit a foraging arena) without affecting the overall proportion of foragers, or their average output.

2/7 Previous studies reported microbiota effects on multiple bee phenotypes, all of which change during behavioral maturation - when worker bees transition from nursing to foraging. So we hypothesized these effects may be mediated by gut microbes affecting behavioral maturation.

1/7 Recent research highlighted the impact of the gut microbiota on cognition and behavior. 🐝 Honeybees have an experimentally manipulable microbiota, providing a great opportunity to investigate how these effects relate to division of labor.

🐝 New preprint on the link between the gut microbiota, behavior and physiology in honeybees! 🧠🍯
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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