@jmeunierearwig
Behavioural ecologist studying earwigs (insects), parental care, social evolution, social immunity, pesticides, global warming... Defender of open science. CNRS Researcher at univ Tours (FR) - IRBI https://joelmeunier.wixsite.com/researchpage
New interview! 🎙️
@jmeunierearwig.bsky.social explains the recent partnership between Insectes Sociaux and Peer Community In, which promotes transparency and supports open science. ✍️
insectessociaux.com/2026/03/10/i...
#SocialInsects #OpenScience #PeerReview #Preprints #InsectScience
An interview for the journal Insectes Sociaux (@insectessociaux.bsky.social), which's now PCI friendly (@peercommunityin.bsky.social) ! Happy to promote open science wherever it is possible.
insectessociaux.com/2026/03/10/i...
New study out with @steigerlab.bsky.social! We investigated male care in a biparentally caring 🪲. Why does male contribution vary so much? Turns out there are repeatable individual differences, and how much the female does only affects some male care behaviors.
authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...
I am hiring a research assistant (vampire bats), a Panama fieldwork coordinator (vampire bats), and also considering postdoc apps (social behavior, any species): socialbat.org/2026/02/19/h...
What a dedicated dad!
The male tiger #jawfish holds the clutch of eggs in his mouth until the behbehies hatch, ~8-9 days later. I usually find them in small groups of 3-5 individuals, each in their own private burrow, spread over an area of ~6’ or so.
#tulamben #gug #fisheggs
A super handy database to help support academic society journals and other ethical publishing. academic.oup.com/jeb/article/...
Researcher with a petri dish, in which ozonated ants were presented to nest mates. CREDIT: Markus Knaden
Ants recognize their nestmates by their distinctive hydrocarbons, including alkenes. Ozone pollution can degrade these alkene compounds, leaving these social insects stranded in a world of strangers . In PNAS: https://ow.ly/qrCn50Yaq1f
Join us in Brittany? One week left to apply for this postdoc position deciphering the mysteries of inbreeding depression...
🪲 Insect parental care in the spotlight!
Join our dedicated symposium at #ECE2026 in Tours, France.
🗓️ Abstracts due 31 Jan – don’t miss out!
www.ece2026.org
Ant colonies prioritize quantity over quality when it comes to their workers, new #ScienceAdvances research finds. https://scim.ag/3L5oJUc
Link to read in full for free: rdcu.be/dI6BS
Our recent paper on lizard societies now online in a special issue of Animal Behaviour. DM if you want me to send you a PDF.
#RejoignezleCNRS 🫵 Envie de repousser les limites de la science ? Le #CNRS recrute des chercheurs (F/H) passionnés.
📅 Concours ouverts jusqu’au 12 janvier 2026.
Candidatez dès maintenant !
👉 carrieres.cnrs.fr/concours-ext...
#Recrutement #Innovation #Recherche #Icicarecrute
📢 Don’t forget! This is the last week of early bird registration for what promises to be a great meeting in Tours, France, next year. Exciting program on all aspects of insects research, great food, lovely wine, a beautiful historic city, castles … it will be memorable! ✨
www.ece2026.org
⚠️ Open science action on the day: Use OpenAlex (openalex.org) instead of Web of Science! 💪
The CNRS has taken the bold step of unsubscribing from WoS! This means €1.4 million will go back into open science initiatives. 👏👏👏
www.cnrs.fr/fr/actualite...
Some possible forms of sex-specific plasticity in each infection component and how they may lead to non-intuitive predictions for sex-biases in pathogen transmission. Using a horizontally transmitted pathogen as an example, transmission capacity through each sex depends on the sex-specific differences in host susceptibility, pathogen loads, and death rates. Hypothetically, each component could have a unique form of sex-specific plasticity – susceptibility might be plastic only for males (i.e., sex-specific), equally plastic in both sexes in the same direction (i.e., equivalent), and equally plastic in both sexes but in opposing directions (i.e., divergent). Yet considering overall disease spread would suggest a strong male-bias in transmission in environment 1, but no bias at all in environment 2, and that this shift in the extent of the ‘sicker sex’ (in regard to the sex where pathogen transmission is highest) would be underpinned entirely by plasticity in male transmission only.
🆕 in "Ecology": Who spreads more disease - males or females? At least in water fleas, it depends on temperature
📄The sicker sex is plastic: Thermal plasticity determines sex biases in pathogen transmission
doi.org/10.1002/ecy....
Got some nice work about ant foraging? Can't decide where to send it? We have a special issue just for you!
And, as a bonus, it's in (afaiac*) the best journal in the world @insectessociaux.bsky.social
link.springer.com/collections/...
*As Far As I Am Concerned
Yesterday, Laura Pasquier successfully defended her PhD thesis, which focused on environmental and endocrine disruptions in parental care, using the European earwig as a case study. After 3 years of hard work, the outcome was fantastic!! Congrats Laura, and all the best for the future!
Sounds good, doesn't it?
("The predicted demise of scientific publications?" - a special day of discussion organised by the CNRS)
Harmony in the hive? Think again! 🐝⚔️
Insect societies are famous for cooperation, but beneath the surface lies a brutal conflict over who gets to wear the crown!
Our new review in Biological Reviews explores the evolutionary battleground caused by such caste fate conflict. 🧵
Pauline Domenech, illustratrice indépendante à Toulouse, a fait de supers dessins lors de la conférence grand public sur les forficules que j'ai donné le WE dernier. Un talent incroyable pour capturer les petits moments et mettre en image les anecdotes amusantes. Bravo, Bravo, Bravo (et merci) !! 👏
A macro photo of a mother earwig guarding a cluster of her tiny, pale babies, all of them on damp earth.
#Bugsky 🐙🌿 Who wants another baby earwig update? Everyone? Thought so. The babies are now two days old and slightly darker than when they hatched. Mama is guarding them and will stay on the job until their second molt. Btw, in the earlier post, the newly-hatched babies only had--
Lots of Earwig activity at Cali Heath @yorkswildlife.bsky.social reserve today, with individuals burrowing into the sandy turf, leaving just the formidable pincers exposed. Common enough, but actually rather extraordinary things. @ynuorg.bsky.social #ukwildlife
Soutenance de thèse Laura Pasquier
Date(s) - Le 26 novembre 2025 à 14h
Lieu(x)- amphi 030 du bâtiment E1
Perturbations environnementales et endocriniennes des soins parentaux : le cas du forficule européen / Environmental and endocrine disruptions in parental care: the case of the European earwig
A macro photo of a group of just-hatched baby earwigs along with some still-unhatched eggs. The babies are transparent, except for orange-brown on their compound eyes and their mandibles. Those pigmented structures are visible through the shells of the yet-to-hatch eggs.
--in which you can better see the eyes and mandibles on the new babies, plus see both structures clearly showing through the shells on the still-unhatched eggs. (Btw, mama earwig was close by in a burrow. She didn't want to come out into the light, so I carefully replaced the rock.)
Very cool study: matricide in ants as a maniputing behaviour favouring social parasitism! 🤯🤯
->Socially parasitic ant queens chemically induce queen-matricide in host workers. Current Biology. www.cell.com/current-biol...
AI image generated using Google's Gemini.
New paper: "A formal theory of group-level adaptation for obligate eusociality", with Kalyani Twyman (@kztwyman.bsky.social) #OpenAccess
academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...
#Image #GoogleGemini @jevbio.bsky.social #OA
This weekend, I was invited by the association A.L.L.E.E. in Toulouse to present earwigs to a broad and curious audience. It was a fantastic opportunity to share our work, highlight why fundamental research matters, and spark new appreciation for these often-misunderstood insects. 😃😃😃
Amis Toulousains : C'est demain ! Venez nombreuses et nombreux 😄👍🐛
