New research suggests that heat stress increases the occurrence of same-sex sexual interactions between male burying beetles – but also that a surprising amount of male-male encounters occur under control conditions. This ongoing project is currently investigating whether a possible trade-off between heat-protection and social communication cuticular hydrocarbons may be involved in possible sex recognition errors, and if these behaviours may result in any costs to reproductive success.

Parental care appears to have evolved in ants by repurposing ancient neural circuits rather than inventing entirely new brain systems. Because the same family of neuropeptides regulates caregiving in ants and mammals, evolution may have relied on a common molecular blueprint for social behavior. The findings establish ants as a powerful new model for studying how parenting came to be. Moreover, because the researchers found that caregiving behaviors change over an ant’s lifetime, their findings also contribute insights into how healthy aging naturally reshapes the brain and behavior.