Hunt Lab, UGA Entomology

New paper from my lab out in Proc B 🎉 : Developmental bias of body size and caste by the fire ant social supergene doi.org/10.1098/rspb... @horacezhl.bsky.social

Found the gene for butts, y'all!! It's a duplication.

Come be our colleague! TT position in Neuroscience in my Department, chock full of great colleagues and in a fabulous place/R1. Reach out if you have questions... careers.umass.edu/cw/en-us/job...

Less science, but more 'metascience', presumably to justify WH proposals to slash NSF by $4B in FY 2027. "The U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Metascience (NSF OMS) applies the scientific method to how science and engineering are funded, organized, and evaluated." What could go wrong?

How are new castes created? Clues from six unusual individuals of the ant Aphaenogaster luteipes 🐜 Intercastes combining queen and worker traits reveal how development could provide the material for ant caste evolution. insectessociaux.wordpress.com/2026/10/28/h... #SocialInsects #AntEvolution

In case you weren't worried already: arxiv.org/abs/2606.10159

In case you didn't know: we are acting as guest editors of this special collection on TEs and Development for Mobile DNA. It would be amazing if you could share with relevant researchers 🙏 link.springer.com/collections/...

I'm hiring a postdoc for our NSF IntBIO project on songbird behavior, physiology and fitness! Start date as early as April 1 or as late as Sept 2027. Emphasis on behavioral endocrinology and transcriptomics, plus field ornithology based on applicant interests: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/33216.

One thing that pisses me off to no end about AI bros in academia is when they cherry pick their favourite problem, where AI may or may not actually work, while proceeding to ignore the global net negative effect of AI usage on the rest of the world. (Full ivory tower, but pretending it’s not.)

Ohio State is searching for an arthropod biologist (e.g. entomologist) at Associate/Full Professor level. They will join our Museum community and oversee the Triplehorn Insect Collection. osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/OSUCareers/j...

There are certainly animals with weird complex genomes. But let me update your graph with the maize numbers.

The Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at U. of Tennessee, Knoxville is accepting applications for MS or PhD. Admitted graduate students are fully funded through teaching assistantships that cover tuition, fees, and an annual pay of $28,134. Deadline Dec 1 2026. eeb.utk.edu/graduate-stu...

Breaking trait scaling via the evolution and regulation of dimorphic decoupling in ants | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #Ants #Pheidole 🐜 @uottawa.ca @uottawascience.bsky.social

Evening of doodling

Excellent review of the many things we have to thank insects for!

Significant news in the ongoing dismantling of NSF. Fewer and fewer left to direct an agency whose decisions on what to fund (or even whether to use their budget at all) increasingly reflect the administration's political priorities rather than the prioritization of investigator-initiated research.

Good report on a frustrating situation by @kvasquez.bsky.social cen.acs.org/policy/resea...

Cool new research by De Gasperin et al! "Overall, our study indicates that multiple transitions of social forms occurred across the ant phylogeny, and that both monogyny and polygyny can be favoured in a broad range of environmental conditions, harsh or mild."

fully funded PhD position studying salt marsh ecology & resilience in the Kostka Lab at Georgia Tech! Start date August 2027 (+ working with Bald Head Island Conservancy)

Together with other scientists I’m suing the 🇺🇸 US National Institutes of Health for violating our 1st Amendment rights & censoring our health science. I’m ready to shine a light on the darkest days. Buckle up, read on. This gets pretty wild… THREAD

This is a truly startling paper. It shows that mRNA can perform regulatory functions *in addition to* its role in encoding a protein. In other words, the distinction between protein-coding RNA and noncoding regulatory RNA is fuzzy. /1 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Told you supergenes were everywhere ;) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

40 years ago today, the BDSC made its 1st shipment. To celebrate, Trudy Kaufman, who packed the 1st shipment, boxed up the same kinds of flies for John Roote at Cambridge, who placed the 1st order. Watch for pics of the arrival next week. We’ve shipped 4,882,378 vials total. That’s a lot of flies!

How does cooperative living arise from information encoded in a genome? To highlight this key topic in evolutionary biology, GBE presents its virtual collection on the “Evolution of Sociality.” 🔗 academic.oup.com/gbe/pages/ev... 📷 @meganbarkdull.bsky.social #societyjournal #genome #evolution

LSU is hiring an Assistant Professor in Behavioral Ecology! Please see the job posting here and share. Application review begins November 15th. lsu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/LSU/jo...

Orthopterans and flea beetles in a new Ant Lab video, out today! youtu.be/Wr8mGF4P188

Journal of Evolutionary Biology virtual collection on Phenotypic Plasticity: academic.oup.com/jeb/pages/ph... Nice photo @horacezhl.bsky.social ;)

Large dog breeds die younger. 'Jumping genes' may explain shorter lifespans. www.popsci.com/science/why-... Epigenetic aging & transposon dysregulation reflect size-related lifespan compression in dogs www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... (And the 1st author is 'Mariner'!!!)

The rapid radiation of cichlid fishes of Lake Malawi is also famous for their vibrant colors. But they also hide incredible beauty inside. We uncovered a centromeric structure in cichlids, unreported in large eukaryotes, similar to regional centromeres of S. pombe. (1/5)🧵 doi.org/10.1007/s105...

Our manuscript is now available in Evolution Letters @evolletters.bsky.social ! We examine the three neo-Ys in mountain pine beetle which are suspected to be contributing to cryptic species diversity. doi.org/10.1093/evle...

This past summer, work from my dissertation was published in MBE ! We found that the sex ratio supergene in Formica likely has two origins, one Nearctic and one Palearctic. This likely happened due to recombination between two standing haplotypes that underlie colony queen number! 🐜🐜

Journal of Evolutionary Biology virtual collection on Phenotypic Plasticity: academic.oup.com/jeb/pages/ph... Nice photo @horacezhl.bsky.social ;)

Developmental bias of body size and caste by the fire ant social supergene doi.org/10.1098/rspb... | #ProcB #DevelopmentalBiology #Evolution #Genetics

Laura Russo and I have a chapter on "The coevolution of flowering plants and pollinators" in this new book on "Threats to Pollinator Abundance and Diversity" www.sciencedirect.com/book/edited-... 🐝🌸🦋🌺

Exclusive: In March, the White House’s budget request for fiscal year 2027 called for eliminating NSF’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. Whether Congress will approve the request is unclear, but NSF is not waiting. Learn more: https://scim.ag/4hC7bes

The paper can be found here: academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

To be more direct about it: OMB's budget-level cuts to science are not really about science. It can be very difficult for people (especially scientists) who are harmed by these cuts to grasp that science is really just collateral damage.

OMB has not repeatedly proposed a 55%+ cut to NSF because of 'woke' research—even if you eliminated all of the grants flagged in the Cruz report, you wouldn't scratch 10% of the budget. It is because NSF heavily funds universities.

OMB's focus on NIH and NSF, which has confused a lot of folks, pretty much boils down to stopping money going to universities.

See our coverage from August on the impact of those withheld funds. Final tally is about ~6200 grants.

Another day working at the frontier AI lab. Everyone keeps asking me if the models have qualia. Buddy, I don’t even have qualia.

NEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light. My reporting:

Exciting news: @uwgenome.bsky.social will be hiring for two tenure-track faculty positions this year, one open rank and one assistant professor. Both are “Genome Sciences” interpreted broadly so we welcome applicants working in a variety of fields and methods. Ad will be out shortly.

I’m really happy to share that my invited review on social insect genome evolution, co-authored with @corriemoreau.bsky.social, is out now in @genomebiolevol.bsky.social 🐝🐜 This is the paper I wish I’d had when studying for quals in grad school, and was a ton of fun to write.

IT IS A PROBLEM!