Ian W. Keesey
Assist. Prof. Behavioral Neurobiology. Univ of Nebraska - Lincoln (UNL). Multimodal sensory communication within Drosophila genus (mostly Sophophora spp). "@Keesey_IW" Twitter. docsci3nce.wixsite.com/ianwkeesey
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- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyHeat can make #fruitfly males sterile at temperatures below their lethal limits. We explore if tissue-specific heat shock protein expression can explain why using 6 #Drosophila species: @chsmithson.bsky.social et al. @ejduncan.bsky.social @amandabretman.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...
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- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyCan plant pathogens boost vector fitness? Together with @hassansalem.bsky.social, we review how phytopathogens can spread further by moonlighting as insect symbionts 🪲 More on this nifty lifestyle in @annualreviews.bsky.social! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyThe first paper from the lab is now out in Science Advances: Multimodal social context modulates larval behavior in Drosophila www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... We find that fly larvae keep their distance to conspecifics in the absence of food, enjoy reading! @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyReally excited to share our new paper in @nature.com! We uncovered how a physical instability of the cytoplasm coupled with the cell cycle drives cytoplasmic partitioning in early embryos #zebrafish #drosophila. Read more in this🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🤩 @poldresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyWhy are some Drosophila flies paralyzed at cold temperatures, and others aren't? 👇
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- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyAn important study maps how nerves control the Drosophila male reproductive tract, revealing two types of glutamatergic neurons that also release serotonin or octopamine. 🔗 buff.ly/3PV2YQW
- Reposted by Ian W. Keeseywww.nature.com/articles/s41... beautiful work from Stephen Liberles’ lab on neural mechanisms of sensing blood volume.
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyHow does evolution turn a harmless bacterial feeder into an active predator? Our new study led by @marianneroca.bsky.social and published in @pnas.org explores how sensory systems were rewired to enable prey detection and predatory behaviour in nematodes. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵below!
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- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyThe second paper from the lab is now available on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We discovered that cannibalistic behavior in fly larvae is social-context dependent. Larval groups avoid dead conspecifics; individuals show high attraction. They only do it when no one is watching 😉
- Reposted by Ian W. Keesey📢Out now in @jevbio.bsky.social, we tried to work out whether heat limits of survival or fertility are reflected in heat shock protein expression across Drosophila 🪰 species. The answer is, well, a bit. With the wonderful @chsmithson.bsky.social @ejduncan.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyNew work in #RESInsectMolecBio Functions of #melanin synthesis genes, yellow & tan, in wing pigmentation revealed by #CRISPR/#Cas9-mediated #mutagenesis in #Drosophila guttifera doi.org/10.1111/imb.70024 #ColourPattern @sassanasgari.bsky.social @gulianusslab.bsky.social @wileyecology.bsky.social
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyCan't wait to serve again as co-director of the CSHL Drosophila Neurobiology course this year! 🧪🪰👀 Application Deadline: March 27 meetings.cshl.edu/courses.aspx... @cshlnews.bsky.social @cshlcourses.bsky.social
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyPaper out now in eLife: DANCE. We combine machine learning with accessible hardware to quantify Drosophila social behaviors. Low-cost behavioral rigs are not a compromise, they are a design philosophy. Accessibility changes the questions we can ask. elifesciences.org/articles/105...
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyHow does the brain control locomotion? In our new preprint, we uncover a brain circuit in Drosophila that controls forward walking independently of turning. This dedicated locomotor circuit enables flexible motor control and might reflect a shared principle across species. doi.org/10.64898/202...
- Reposted by Ian W. Keesey📣 Our 2025 Cover of the Year goes to this beautiful confocal microscopy image of an adult #Drosophila eye from this May 2025 study (rupress.org/jcb/article/...). Congrats to Vaisaly R. Nath, Padinjat Raghu (@rpadinjat.bsky.social) and colleagues, and thank you to everyone who voted!
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyNew paper out: “allopatric” Drosophila species aren’t so allopatric after all. We show that most currently allopatric species pairs probably overlapped in the past and exchanged genes at levels similar to sympatric pairs. @evolletters.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/evle... [1/6]
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyOur follow up paper on Sex: Differential neuronal survival defines a novel axis of sexual dimorphism in the Drosophila brain: Cell Genomics www.cell.com/cell-genomic...
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyRuo Sun, Jonathan Gershenzon et al. from our Biochemistry Dept. report in PNAS that the insect-pathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana can detoxify the defense substances of bark beetles, which originate from plant precursors, and successfully infect the insects. www.ice.mpg.de/526562/PR_Sun
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyA high-resolution atlas of the brain predicts lineage and birth order underlying neuronal identity: Cell Genomics www.cell.com/cell-genomic... Follow-up paper on sex, online in the New year
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyThrilled to see our review article "The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins" highlighted on the cover of Nature Reviews Neuroscience 🤩. www.nature.com/articles/s41... @msarscentre.bsky.social 🧠✨🧬🌊🪼🧽
- First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyEver wanted to know how the visual system of a long distance migratory moth looks like? Then you'll find your answers in our new paper. Finally out, after about a decade of collecting data by a group af amazing co-authors. Find it here, open access: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- Reposted by Ian W. Keesey🧠🪰 The adult Drosophila brain connectome now gives us a complete wiring diagram of ~140k neurons. But a wiring diagram alone isn’t understanding. How is this massive network organized? Our paper tackles that question by mapping community structure across the entire fly brain. 1/
- Reposted by Ian W. Keesey*First preprint from our lab* !!!!! How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭 led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman: “Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Thread ⬇️
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- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyConnectomics is Method of the Year 2025!! @natmethods.nature.com just released the news nature.com/articles/s41... In my perspective piece, I afford some predictions into the future and compare how we are doing vs. genomics www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyMind-bogglingly detailed recordings from virtually every neuron in the higher olfactory centres of the Drosophila brain reveal how innate odour values (= nice/nasty) are encoded by different processes (also, attractive pheromones share the nice process). www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
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- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyExciting new #Zebrafish research from the #WeinsteinLab, led by Jong Park! “Specialized gas-exchange endothelium of the zebrafish gill” — www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Amazing to see red blood cells moving through the gills! Don’t forget to check out the supplemental movies ;-)
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyPaper for the #Drosophila community on a food recipe that rears dozens of species. This was a full team effort, with key contributions from UG, MSc, and PhD students! 👩🎓🎉 Plus an #infection observation re: Diet x #Microbiota 🦠 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #EvolBiol #AcademicSky #SymbioSky 1/4
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyBowhead whales live twice as long as humans, and have a unique DNA repair mechanism to avoid cancer. Novel research w U Rochester in collaboration with the Inuit in Alaska. 🧪#cancer apple.news/Ag-kaIoQ2QSG...
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyI will be co-teaching a summer course at Allen Institute on connectomics education please apply. Travel support, new connectomics data sets and learning directly from the scientists who built these datasets. Details here: alleninstitute.org/events/incor...
- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyOur paper on the counterintuitive effects of activating dopamine "reward" neurons is out now! Props to all the trainees, especially Fio Lozada-Perdomo and Yuzhen Chen who did most of the work. Yuzhen is applying for PhD programs now and you'd be lucky to get her! www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
- Reposted by Ian W. Keesey🚨RA/PhD position available in evolutionary neurobiology 🚨 Working on a deep dive into circuit changes during mushroom body expansion in Heliconius butterflies @camzoology.bsky.social - employment benefits - 4 years funding - 1000% fun Deadline: 14/1/2026 Details: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...
- Reposted by Ian W. Keesey1/n We have discovered that bees can keep track of time duration! Bees can discriminate long 🟡🟡 vs short🟡 flashes, a bit like the "dash" and "dot" of the Morse code. Check our new paper royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... and videoclip youtu.be/hsGxU65OMQk?... @preparedmindslab.bsky.social
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- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyDo you work (/want to work) with caterpillars? Or sensory systems? Or BOTH?! Well good golly do we have the paper for you! We explain the senses that caterpillars have, what they use them for, and how anthropogenic sensory pollution might be messing it all up 🐛 doi.org/10.1007/s003...
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- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyExcited to share my most recent postdoctoral work in the Jeanne lab @yaleneuro.bsky.social ! “Sensory processing reformats odor coding around valence and dynamics” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We ask: how is a sensory code transformed across multiple stages of processing to inform behavior?
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- Reposted by Ian W. KeeseyParental care, and more complex cooperative systems of care, have independently evolved in hundreds of animal lineages. In an article published today, we explore how these behaviors evolve 𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭l shorturl.at/g5OPw /1
