What’s clear is that developmental plasticity is a powerful force in evolution, both in the phenotypic diversity that it produces and the evolutionary consequences of modifying its rules. Congrats Patrick and I hope folks enjoy… still a ways to go, but lovely to see progress made.

I think it’s deeper than ants! Organ:body scaling is ubiquitous across animals, but a mechanism remains elusive. Does ant caste differentiation (not determination; that’s different) result from ancient hormones that, directly or indirectly, couple organ growth with size? For now, anyone's guess

But it’ll be easier to agree *that* size and caste are linked once we can plausibly explain *why* this might be the case! In 2019, the Trible lab started asking “why” from three angles (lab evo-devo, population genomics, math+macroevolution)... it was HARD work, but all three are coming soon

I believe this is generally true for ant castes, in part because it might unify “unrelated” evolutionary observations via development (argued in tinyurl.com/yp7s529j) and predict future experimental results (argued in tinyurl.com/x85b5z88). Hopefully Patrick’s clean experiment also helps = ).

What is this photo!?? Why is he of all people standing in front of a GameCube kiosk demoing Metroid prime XD

Feel like I spent more time writing my DEI statement than some orgs have spent defending their DEI programs