Tomas Kay
Ant biologist & naturalist. Post-doc at the Rockefeller University and junior fellow of the Simon's Society of Fellows
- Reposted by Tomas KayApply for a PhD position in the Pan lab @miyapan.bsky.social at MPI Biology 🇩🇪 to study the molecular mechanisms and evolution of sex determination in haplodiploid insects 🐜🐝.
- Reposted by Tomas Kay[This post could not be retrieved]
- Excited about the prospect of being able to automatically annotate ant behaviour without going via pose estimation, which struggles in the situations we care most about
- Our preprint is out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Peter Skovorodnikov and I are excited to present FERAL: a new video-understanding toolkit that maps raw video directly to behavior, no pose estimation required. It works across species, from lab to field, and even in collective systems. (🧵1/n)
- Reposted by Tomas KayNew article from the lab out today, in which we discuss how social behavior evolves at the molecular level. From parenting across the animal tree of life to caste systems in social insects, it’s all connected (and, therefore, slowly starts to make sense)…
- Parental 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
- Parental 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
- Across these independent origins parental behavior is repeatedly underpinned by the co-option of functionally analogous, and sometimes evolutionarily homologous, molecular regulators. /2
- Reposted by Tomas KayWhat does mating look like when you only have a single shot at getting it right? Very excited to share our work on an almost-invisible female control, rapidly evolving mating recognition systems, and species that break the rules and take over the world. IN MOSQUITOES>
- Reposted by Tomas Kay@AntCommunity 🐜 🐜 Chengyuan Liu found a Camponotus ant colony where all sexual larvae have red spots of various sizes, but worker larvae don’t. Any idea what this is?🤔 Video in the comment.
- Playing hide-and-seek with saltmarsh sparrows at Plumb beach: This East coast endemic inhabits coastal salt marshes and is endangered by habitat loss
- These two mourning geckos looked like they were mating outside my hotel room in Gamboa, Panama. They are both female. The mourning gecko is an all female species that engages in pseudo-copulation to stimulate egg laying. Not sure I’ve knowingly seen female-female mounting before.
- A 𝘾𝙚𝙥𝙝𝙖𝙡𝙤𝙩𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙨 worker with a strepsipteran parasite in its abdomen. Male strepsipterans look like normal insects but females are neotenic, retaining larval form throughout their lives. Females implant themselves into the abdomens of other insects & expose their anterior tip /1
- (1) A moulting Cicada. (2) Moulding is a vulnerable moment - a moulting cicada getting eaten alive by big-headed ants. And (3) aduldhood also dangerous! A cicada in the mouth of a broad-billed motmot. Over the past few days in Panama.
- Reposted by Tomas Kay[Not loaded yet]
