Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · 5m

Agree! Those conversations haunt me like nothing else… so many people thought it was ok to attack a hospital… but there is NO ethical reason to do that ever, period!

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · 6h

Tenure track assistant professor of biology position in my department just posted!

www.schooljobs.com/careers/prov...

4 2

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · 4d

I’ve been using Helicon remote & Helicon focus with our Cognisys Stackshot rail

1 1

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · 4d

Isn’t she perfect?

1 1 18

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · 28d

When I visited the AMNH for a seminar on Ants and Palestine last Spring, someone on the zoom chat suggested I "stick to the ants"... but they missed the whole point.

motifri.com/ants-in-the-...

Ants in the City: More important now than ever - Motif

Ants in the City column celebrates one year with Motif. “Stick to ants” he cried, hiding behind a zoom chat rather than showing up to say it to me in […]

motifri.com

1 3

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Sep 8

Important read! "We must come together to resist attempts to undermine our identities and our work." @jessicalwarelab.bsky.social www.nj.com/opinion/2025...

Trump’s war on diversity is having a devastating impact on critical scientific fields | Opinion

Federal funding cuts to DEI initiatives and hostile policies are creating an environment where innovation is impossible.

www.nj.com

1 5

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Aug 31

Sharing hugs and hope that a shopping trip to someplace validating will help you feel incredible

1 2

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Aug 30

Starting my second decade as a #trans #womeninSTEM on the faculty at Providence College. We've got ants to study, biology to teach, and barriers to break down!

motifri.com/ants-in-the-...

Photo of Jane standing on a rock, arms raised and in a purple dress, facing the ocean

3 24

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Aug 18

Not sure who wants a postcard but look at these gorgeous USPS stamps!

A sheet of 20 forever stamps from the LIFE MAGNIFIED collection by the USPS featuring brilliant colorful macro photographs of cells and tissues! Moth wing scales. Diving beetle foot, and barnacle legs are my favs.

3

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Aug 16

Fun story about needle ants causing a wicked bit of embarrassing confusion in Massachusetts... www.enterprisenews.com/story/news/e...

Was Bridgewater man stung by invasive Asian needle ant? What an entomologist thinks

"100% on the record this is not a needle ant," Providence College entomologist Jane Waters said of an ant that stung a Bridgewater man.

www.enterprisenews.com

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Jul 15

Assemblage of Joy, a poem for our Ants in the City column with Motif RI

motifri.com/ants-in-the-...

Ants in the City: Assemblage of joy

Dr. Jane Waters
Providence College

Running along the boardwalk
on the way to the shore,
In two's and in three's, racing
on their way, Crematogaster
sisters, acrobats with heart.

The farmers brought us out
to see the mystery, a crop
had been targeted, thirsty
broccoli, the youngest
sprouts, Tetramorium encircled.

Clinging to the bottom of
a small boulder small and
black, almost entirely invisible
Myrmecina, cryptic but textured,
residents on the roll.

Cinnabar creps, witch's
butter, and hexagonal polypores,
Deana finds the Aphaenogaster
hiding inside every gill, when they
fungal foray and festival slay.

Antennae curving to insertion, or
bent abruptly, with a notched
clypeus or curving propodeal spines,
One character at a time, Myrmica
unidentified.

It's easy to feel small
and helpless, with never-ending
war and evil all around.
But under foot and the weight
of the world, the ants still
make their homes together, they
still breathe --

and so too, should we.

Illustration by Danika Valentine and with thanks to Skyler Jay. Follow Dr. Jane and her research lab on Instagram @antlabpvd or on the web www.lovetheants.org.

2

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Jul 2

Myrmecina americana ants filmed in #slomo exiting and returning to their nest through a portal they constructed from nest debris #myrmecology

1 4

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Jun 26

“I really wanted to get stung for you”

Grateful for this quote, and others:
www.providencejournal.com/story/news/l...

Asian needle ants are going viral for their nasty sting. Meet the colony that lives in Providence.

Asian needle ants, an invasive species making news around the country, were found in Providence in 2015, but there's no sign they ever spread.

www.providencejournal.com

Reposted by Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸

Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology @sicb.bsky.social · Jun 6

#pridemonth SICB-
Resources for how to support #trans colleagues :

“1)Create a #Gender-#Inclusive #Environment Research institutional, governmental, local, and other bureaucratic procedures and policies that recognize and support gender transition…”

For the full post:
sicb.org

1 10 18

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Jun 13

This TikTok is probably my favorite, it shows needle ant vibe checks and a queen too! #lovetheants #brachyponera #myrmecology

2

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Jun 13

We used to post a lot of needle ant tiktoks… maybe should share a few?

1

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Jun 13

My former student Sami took that portrait! I think they were a different flowering plant on our campus, where Brachyponera have been quietly living.

1 1

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Jun 13

Not sure who needs to hear this but Needle ants (Brachyponera chinensis) can really be quite lovely.

A student holding up a needle ant walking on her finger

Chest tattoo of two needle ants doing a vibe check, just on the right side of Jane’s ant necklace

1 4

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · Jun 13

@sipappas.bsky.social needle ants are often quite gentle, their stings are pretty mild, this story amplifies unnecessary hype and and should be corrected

www.scientificamerican.com/article/inva...

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · May 15

Join us for the 26th annual Rhode Island Bioblitz, June 6-7th! www.rinhs.org

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · May 12

Also some some pretty sweet things in the city too, including the manhatt-ant :)

The will to exist brings the conception of mutation

Scenes from the very pro-queer nonbinarian bookstore bathroom!

2

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · May 12

Loved seeing behind the scenes!

1 2

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · May 12

Privileged to meet with students and staff at @amnh.org last week and honored to get to speak about how the integrity and future of our biology research programs depends on political activism and the call for a Free Palestine, in our classrooms and across our communities.

Seminar poster:

"Metabolic rates, natural history, and collective behavior of ants from Rhode Island to Palestine"

Dr. Jane Waters

American Museum
of Natural History
Comparative Biology
Seminar
Monday, May 5*h, 11 AM

Dr Jane and Kate in the insect collection holding a tray of large pinned ponerine ants

Dr Jane and Rin making silly ant antennae poses for a photo outside in NYC.

1 7

Jane Waters 🏳️‍⚧️🐜🇵🇸 @lovetheants.bsky.social · May 6

Added you to the 🐜 list! Welcome!!!!

1