Elva Robinson

360 watercolour flowers painted stamp size across 18 pages of paper, laid out across a large dining table

The final five panels of watercolour flowers in bloom in late December in Yorkshire

The first flower: a snowdrop painted on 22 December 2024

The last flower, Viburnum against a blue sky, painted on 21 December 2025

And that’s a wrap on a year of watercolour #WildflowerHour: 365 flowers painted within a week of blooming. Mostly wildflowers, with a few garden escapes, and a whole lot of joy.

On East-West edges, they spread along the south-facing edge only; on North-South edges, they spread equally on both edges, but...they spread 3 times as fast on edges that are orientated N-S or E-S than on edges that are 'diagonal', i.e. NW-SE or SW-NE. These seem to be the worst of both worlds! 2/2

They do... but they like evening sun too! Nests were more numerous on the south-facing sides of edges than north-facing, as you would expect for a sun-loving species, but when we looked at their gradual spread along edges over a decade, things were a bit different. 1/2

Large wood ant mound on the edge of a plantation forest

These wood ants are edge specialists... but not all edges are equal. Jacob Podesta used a decade of population expansion data to show that wood ants spread more quickly along certain edges, depending on the edge orientation. Currently available open access here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Bumbling around over what to get your loved ones for Christmas? Look no further! Your answer to fun, learning & festive family competition is here. Social insects trump cards, available at the Winter Meeting. Order today: www.iussi-nweurope.org/edi

All proceeds go to funding inclusion bursaries.

I'm very proud to receive the 2025 Robert P. McIntosh Award from the @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social Vegetation Section at #ESA2025 with an amazing group of colleagues, for our paper on Community #MastSeeding. 🥳

Paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Award info: esa.org/vegetation/a...

Great questions! This species has many queens, so nests can be inherited by overlapping generations of related queens, and if conditions are right, can be occupied indefinitely! The nests grow fast, but I would estimate at least 10 years to reach this size, and this nest is likely much older

Amazing talk by @jennyperry.bsky.social bringing together signalling theory and socially transferred materials. Keep your eyes peeled for the eventual paper with @steveramm.bsky.social @elvarobinson.bsky.social and myself #ESEB2025 @socialtransfernet.bsky.social

Do you moth trap in the UK? See below!

@royentsoc.bsky.social

Large wood ant nest in a spruce forest, surrounded by bracken. Next to the nest is Professor Elva Robinson. The nest is taller than Elva.

Look at the size of this wood ant nest! (Or perhaps I'm just smaller than you thought). This is a Northern Hairy Wood Ant nest in the Lake District, sampled by @melvinopolka.bsky.social and me for the @monitant.bsky.social project this year.

Had an amazing time with @melvinopolka.bsky.social and Igor Siedlecki, discovering so many beautiful ants nests and collecting samples and data for the Europe-wide MonitAnt @monitant.bsky.social project. We are so lucky that wood ants always choose such beautiful places to make their homes!

👉 How to get involved:
- Follow this page for updates and event invites
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- Or just drop us a DM, everyone’s welcome!

We’re excited to connect with you. Watch this space for future seminars and updates!
See you soon, fluids (or beverages) in hand!

I'm so fortunate to have these amazing PhD students in my group!

Abstract submission - Royal Entomological Society Abstract Submission Deadline for submissions: Friday 20th June 2025 Ento25 provides an opportunity to present your research to a large audience across the field of insect science. We are offering…

⏰ Today is the deadline to submit your #Ento25 abstracts!

Present your work to the global entomological community. With in-person & online options, there's opportunities for everyone to participate.

📅 Deadline: 17:00 (BST), 20 June 🔽
buff.ly/CS8MyOQ

unistrathclyde.bsky.social

Selfie of 3 ecologists in the field, posing around a wood ant nest in an open woodland area.

Making the most of the warm weather to re-map the cooperative wood ant colony networks at the beautiful @nationaltrust.org.uk's Longshaw Estate. This was day 1 last week - two keen student volunteers getting their first experience of wood ants

Perhaps you might have seen the twig-nesting ant Leptothorax acervorum instead? It is a close relative of the Shining Guest Ant, and a very similar size, shape and colour, just a bit less shiny!

Thanks! This species of 'guest ant' (Formicoxenus nitidulus) is only found in Eurasia, but there are several other species found in North America. It would be very surprising if you found our European Shining Guest Ant away from red wood ants though, because it is an obligate commensal.

A marked honey bee forager collects sucrose solution, either treatment or control, from an artificial feeder.

Former graduate student Dr. Laura McHenry peers at a bee while it forages at the feeder

The herbicide glyphosate is globally ubiquitous. Here we report in a new paper on the sublethal effects to the behavior and brains of bees, a non-target organism that might encounter the herbicide while foraging in agricultural landscapes. Photo creds LC McHenry & R Schurch
doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Might be harder to spot after you've sat on them... their hosts do tend to get annoyed easily! But do keep a look out, they are very distinctive once you have got your eye in. Most easily spotted in late summer or autumn, and on sunny days.

Drawing Bees - May 7, 14, 21, 2025 Will the classes be recorded?

There are still a few spaces left in my Drawing Bees online course starting tomorrow evening. It's a fun way to spend a few spring evenings. www.eventbrite.com/e/drawing-be... 🌿🎨

Donate to Save Ada Lovelace Day's archives and newsletter, organised by Suw Charman-Anderson Last year, I took the difficult decision not to organise another … Suw Charman-Anderson needs your support for Save Ada Lovelace Day's archives and newsletter

The Ada Lovelace Day fundraiser is closing in on its stretch goal, with just £887 left to raise! If you can chuck a tenner into the kitty, I'd be very grateful.

I did a quick thread of the things this will allow me to do here: bsky.app/profile/ada...

Good to know that I'm sneaking yet more ants into #FieldworkPodcast! The wood ants are already in there: bsky.app/profile/suw....

Insights into the population genetics of an extreme habitat specialist, the wood ant commensal Formicoxenus nitidulus

This Shining Guest Ant population genetics project was a collaboration between @york.ac.uk @jennistockan.bsky.social and @forestresearchuk.bsky.social, funded by @futurewoodlands.bsky.social Green open access version of the paper available here: pure.york.ac.uk/portal/en/pu... 5/5

We couldn't have completed this project without the excellent support from @yorkdatascience.bsky.social from the initial design to the final figures - including these which demonstrate genetic differentiation between Scottish and English popuations of Shining Guest ants 4/5 bsky.app/profile/york...

Haplotype network of the 6 UK haplotypes and 8 European haplotypes from the BOLD database. Most UK haplotypes cluster together, but one is the same as a Swiss haplotype.

We also looked at how our UK Shining Guest Ants fit with other populations in Europe - but we found there wasn't much data to help understand this pattern. Fortunately the @monitant.bsky.social project will collect European-wide data to solve this problem. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author... 3/5

• This first population genetics study of the shining guest ant Formicoxenus nitidulus shows clear genetic differentiation between populations in Scotland and England. • Despite being an extreme habitat specialist, living only in the nests of wood ants, this ant maintains genetic diversity, likely due to effective local dispersal. • Individual wood ant nests are valuable conservation units, as they can support multiple, genetically distinct shining guest ant colonies.

In our study of Shining Guest Ants, we found that despite their tiny size, and having wingless males, Guest Ant populations are well-mixed within a site. This means that queens are successfully dispersing to other distant wood ant host nests within a site. 2/5 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author...

A large wood ant, with a dull black gaster and head, and dull brown thorax, is on a pale stone background, and indicated by a blue arrow. Next to it a much smaller ant with a shiny back gaster and shiny brown head and thorax is indicated by a red arrow. The blue arrow at is the wood ant Formica lugubris and the red arrow at is the shining guest ant Formicoxenus nitidulus.

Did you know about these tiny shiny ants (red arrow) living with wood ants (blue arrow)? They are Shining Guest Ants (Formicoxenus) and we have recently discovered that a wood ant nest can be home to several genetically distinct colonies of these 'guests'! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author... 1/5

So pleased to see this paper published - the fieldwork was beset by Covid disruptions and restrictions, but we found out some fascinating things about the beautiful but elusive Shining Guest Ants. Project funded by @futurewoodlands.bsky.social

Edith Clarke was an electrical engineer & the first female professor of electrical engineering in the USA. She developed a method to calculate the maximum power that a power transmission line could carry and remain stable. Read more & subscribe: adalovelaceday.subst...

Strong and weak environmental perturbations cause contrasting restructure of ant transportation networks | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Dynamic transportation networks are embedded in all levels of biological organization. Ever-growing anthropogenic disturbances and an increasingly variable climate highlight the importance of understa...

Work on the resilience of wood ant transport networks led by SandorPiross shows network dynamics that are highly effective in stable environments have limited capacity to cope with targeted disruption 2/2 @uoyopenres.bsky.social @matinadonaldson.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...