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Reposted by Orit Peleg

Nathan Schneider @ntnsndr.in · 11d

I'm really looking forward to hosting this @metagov.bsky.social seminar on the governance of bees, fireflies, and plants with my colleage @oritpeleg.bsky.social: luma.com/pzbp4zq1

Seminar: Governance Among Plants & Insects with Dr. Orit Peleg · Zoom · Luma

Dr. Orit Peleg seeks to understand the behavior of disordered living systems by merging tools from physics, biology, engineering, and computer science. At the…

luma.com

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Network Science Institute @nunetsi.bsky.social · Aug 30

#NetSI 's first-year PhD student Chethan Kavaraganahalli Prasanna co-authored a study with Univ. of Colorado Boulder featured in the NYT and published in PLOS Biology (shorturl.at/iHeXb)!

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/s...

Even on a Rough Construction Site, Honeybees Figure It Out

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Orit Peleg

PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · Aug 27

How do #honeybees adapt their comb-building to different spatial constraints? A new study from @oritpeleg.bsky.social &co uses 3D printed panels and X-ray microscopy to reveal the existence of three distinct construction modes, from tilting cells to building complex 3D structures.🧪
plos.io/4n1g6Hs

Honeybees adapt to a range of comb cell sizes by merging, tilting, and layering their construction

Honeybees often need to build their comb under conditions that prevent a regular hexagonal lattice. This study uses 3D printed panels and X-ray microscopy to explore their adaptive process when differ...

plos.io

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Aug 26

Can it please be a quilt?

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Aug 26

New paper in PLOS Biology: as we raise the difficulty of our 3D printed puzzles, bees keep landing on combs with ever stranger hexagonal order! 🐝

Led by the brilliant Golnar Gharooni Fard, in collaboration with CK Prasanna & FL Jiménez

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Close-up of experimental honeycombs built after a challenging 3D printed setup, showing mostly hexagonal cells.

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Aug 9

❤️🙏

Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Aug 9

More on collective behavior: Our new Annual Review of Biophysics piece - with the stellar Danielle Chase - explores how animals sense, share information, and make group decisions. In honeybees and beyond 🐝

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Title page of the review article 'The Physics of Sensing and Decision-Making by Animal Groups' by Danielle L. Chase and Orit Peleg in Annual Review of Biophysics. Includes illustrations of collective behavior in honeybees: a diagram showing uncommitted scout bees transitioning through decision-making to choose between two nest sites; a honeybee on a honeycomb cell; a cluster of bees hanging from a branch; and a schematic of bees forming a layered cluster.

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Reposted by Orit Peleg

wbialek.bsky.social @wbialek.bsky.social · Aug 9

It was an honor to write this, but also great fun. A chance to look back at the classics, and think about the path forward. #Physics is a beautiful human endeavor. journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...

Emergence of Brains

This review traces how ideas from statistical physics evolved into foundational models of neural computation, shaping modern AI and culminating in the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.

journals.aps.org

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Jul 28

Love this example! The seabird rhythms are a great case of synchronised clocks in the wild. Coupled oscillator entrainment is a whole rabbit hole of its own... A handy overview is here: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Principles, mechanisms and functions of entrainment in biological oscillators | Interface Focus

Entrainment is a phenomenon in which two oscillators interact with each other, typically through physical or chemical means, to synchronize their oscillations. This phenomenon occurs in biology to coo...

royalsocietypublishing.org

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Jul 27

We didn’t forget the tangled worms! They make an appearance in our Annual Review of Biophysics piece (with another stellar postdoc, Danielle Chase), where we discuss how blackworms weave themselves into living soft matter and the resilience that brings:

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

❤️🪱

The Physics of Sensing and Decision-Making by Animal Groups | Annual Reviews

To ensure survival and reproduction, individual animals navigating the world must regularly sense their surroundings and use this information for important decision-making. The same is true for animal...

www.annualreviews.org

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Jul 27

New review in PRX Life, where we propose a tangibility scale for the physics of social interactions, and highlight a few tangible examples - from dead fish “swimming” to efficient schooling, warm penguin huddles, and dry ant rafts.
Written with the brilliant Chantal Nguyen 🐟🐧🐜

tinyurl.com/naet5tdh

Three‑row table linking scales: fish, penguin, ant. Each row shows an individual silhouette, a pair‑level interaction image, and the emergent collective - schooling fish, penguin huddle, and an ant raft.

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Jason Bittel @bittelmethis.bsky.social · Jul 14

Fireflies are still generally declining, & light pollution is one big reason why, but a few species are also carrying on in places that are bathed in artificial light. Which is pretty wild!

Featuring Sriram Murali's excellent photography! 🧪

www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

Fireflies are flourishing in places you wouldn't expect

Pesticides, habitat loss, and light pollution are threatening firefly populations worldwide, but even in urban areas, some lightning bugs continue to shine.

www.nationalgeographic.com

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Reposted by Orit Peleg

Colossal @thisiscolossal.com · Jul 14

Nearly a century before the invention of the microscope and even longer before entomology became a field of research, Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1600) devoted himself to studying the natural world. He's thought to have created the first compendium of its kind.

The 16th-Century Artist Who Created the First Compendium of Insect Drawings

Before the invention of the microscope and the field of entomology emerged, Joris Hoefnagel devoted himself to the natural world.

www.thisiscolossal.com

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Jul 3

🙏❤️

Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Jul 3

📣 We're on the lookout for a creative postdoc with strong computational skills!

Be the go-to person in the lab for building simple but powerful simulations that test wild ideas on biological rythems: from daily cycles of mussel groups at deep sea, to firefly flash synchronization!

More info below👇

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Jun 27

🤩

Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Jun 26

Thank you so much!

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Jun 26

Awesome, thank you!

Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Jun 26

The longer the better, but even just a few nights would be great 🙏

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Jun 26

Whoohoo! Thank you @devonianstone.bsky.social

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Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Jun 25

🙏

Orit Peleg @oritpeleg.bsky.social · Jun 25

Help us record firefly flashes! 👇🙏

George Musser @georgemusser.com · Jun 24

Do you have fireflies in your backyard? Biologist @oritpeleg.bsky.social is collecting data! #emergence docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Help us Record Firefly Flashes ✨

Firefly flashes are amazing ❤️ During mating season, fireflies gather in groups and flash their species-specific flash pattern. To better understand these communication signals, we developed a method ...

docs.google.com

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · Jun 23

Hello hello #complexity and #emergence people.

I'm getting a complexity+emergence (broadly defined) starter pack going.

I've focused on active accounts that often make original posts (not just reposts) and have at least a few thousand followers. Inclusion is not endorsement.

go.bsky.app/BLuVyWj

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Reposted by Orit Peleg

INSTAAR 🏳️‍🌈 @instaar.bsky.social · Jun 16

Decoding 🌟 firefly communication & conservation in Colorado

Join us for a *free* evening talk by @oritpeleg.bsky.social at the Mountain Research Station (run by @colorado.edu + INSTAAR):
🗓 Wed Jun 18th
🕖 7:00 pm
📍 Near Ward CO
🔗 calendar.colorado.edu/event/orit-p...

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Reposted by Orit Peleg

Nautilus Magazine @nautil.us · May 4

Among the thousands of firefly species in the world, only a handful blink in sync. While both male and female fireflies flash, only the males synchronize. 🧪

The Mathematical Mysteries of Fireflies

What blinking bugs reveal about synchrony in the universe

nautil.us

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