Tom Wenseleers
@twenseleers.bsky.social
Professor @KULeuven - evolutionary biology, theoretical biology & biostatistics (#Rstats). Social insects & microorganisms. Social evolution, self organisation, chemical ecology, statistical machine learning. https://bio.kuleuven.be/eeb/tw/research
Pinned
In our new study we were the first to experimentally simulate the origin of sociality! By controlling how many wasp 🐝daughters could help their mom, we found that early helpers don't just add to colony success—they multiply it!
Reposted by Tom Wenseleers
Independently evolved supergenes control colony social organization and queen reproductive strategies in several ant lineages. Sigeman et al. uncover a novel 9 Mb supergene controlling queen size and social organization in Myrmica ruginodis.
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf255
#evobio #molbio #ants
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf255
#evobio #molbio #ants
November 5, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Independently evolved supergenes control colony social organization and queen reproductive strategies in several ant lineages. Sigeman et al. uncover a novel 9 Mb supergene controlling queen size and social organization in Myrmica ruginodis.
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf255
#evobio #molbio #ants
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf255
#evobio #molbio #ants
In our new study we were the first to experimentally simulate the origin of sociality! By controlling how many wasp 🐝daughters could help their mom, we found that early helpers don't just add to colony success—they multiply it!
October 31, 2025 at 2:30 PM
In our new study we were the first to experimentally simulate the origin of sociality! By controlling how many wasp 🐝daughters could help their mom, we found that early helpers don't just add to colony success—they multiply it!
Deadline to submit an abstract for our IUSSI winter meeting in Leuven, 18-19 December is fast approaching! Please come and join us & submit your abstract before the 31st of October! Will be great fun & excellent lineup of speakers, with plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social!
🚨 Deadline to submit an abstract for our IUSSI winter meeting in beautiful Leuven, 18-19 December has been extended to 31st October 2025
🚨 Please register at: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Come and join us - will be great fun & great lineup of speakers! Plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
🚨 Please register at: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Come and join us - will be great fun & great lineup of speakers! Plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
We are delighted that our Winter Meeting 2025 in Leuven 🇧🇪 is approaching!
Abstract submissions now open: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Date: December 18-19
Abstract deadline: October 15
Host: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution at KU Leuven
Plenary: Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
Abstract submissions now open: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Date: December 18-19
Abstract deadline: October 15
Host: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution at KU Leuven
Plenary: Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
October 29, 2025 at 9:10 AM
Deadline to submit an abstract for our IUSSI winter meeting in Leuven, 18-19 December is fast approaching! Please come and join us & submit your abstract before the 31st of October! Will be great fun & excellent lineup of speakers, with plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social!
Reposted by Tom Wenseleers
🚨 Deadline to submit an abstract for our IUSSI winter meeting in beautiful Leuven, 18-19 December has been extended to 31st October 2025
🚨 Please register at: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Come and join us - will be great fun & great lineup of speakers! Plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
🚨 Please register at: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Come and join us - will be great fun & great lineup of speakers! Plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
We are delighted that our Winter Meeting 2025 in Leuven 🇧🇪 is approaching!
Abstract submissions now open: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Date: December 18-19
Abstract deadline: October 15
Host: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution at KU Leuven
Plenary: Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
Abstract submissions now open: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Date: December 18-19
Abstract deadline: October 15
Host: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution at KU Leuven
Plenary: Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
October 16, 2025 at 1:43 PM
🚨 Deadline to submit an abstract for our IUSSI winter meeting in beautiful Leuven, 18-19 December has been extended to 31st October 2025
🚨 Please register at: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Come and join us - will be great fun & great lineup of speakers! Plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
🚨 Please register at: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Come and join us - will be great fun & great lineup of speakers! Plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
🚨 Deadline to submit an abstract for our IUSSI winter meeting in beautiful Leuven, 18-19 December has been extended to 31st October 2025
🚨 Please register at: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Come and join us - will be great fun & great lineup of speakers! Plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
🚨 Please register at: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Come and join us - will be great fun & great lineup of speakers! Plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
We are delighted that our Winter Meeting 2025 in Leuven 🇧🇪 is approaching!
Abstract submissions now open: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Date: December 18-19
Abstract deadline: October 15
Host: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution at KU Leuven
Plenary: Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
Abstract submissions now open: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Date: December 18-19
Abstract deadline: October 15
Host: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution at KU Leuven
Plenary: Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
October 16, 2025 at 1:43 PM
🚨 Deadline to submit an abstract for our IUSSI winter meeting in beautiful Leuven, 18-19 December has been extended to 31st October 2025
🚨 Please register at: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Come and join us - will be great fun & great lineup of speakers! Plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
🚨 Please register at: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Come and join us - will be great fun & great lineup of speakers! Plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
Reposted by Tom Wenseleers
Very happy to see our new study on the evolution of eusociality come out in Evolution Letters! Our study is the first to experimentally manipulate the proportion of females that stay and help to simulate incipient sociality & assess fitness impact of helping. 🧵
September 23, 2025 at 9:18 AM
Very happy to see our new study on the evolution of eusociality come out in Evolution Letters! Our study is the first to experimentally manipulate the proportion of females that stay and help to simulate incipient sociality & assess fitness impact of helping. 🧵
Very happy to see our new study on the evolution of eusociality come out in Evolution Letters! Our study is the first to experimentally manipulate the proportion of females that stay and help to simulate incipient sociality & assess fitness impact of helping. 🧵
September 23, 2025 at 9:18 AM
Very happy to see our new study on the evolution of eusociality come out in Evolution Letters! Our study is the first to experimentally manipulate the proportion of females that stay and help to simulate incipient sociality & assess fitness impact of helping. 🧵
Reposted by Tom Wenseleers
We are delighted that our Winter Meeting 2025 in Leuven 🇧🇪 is approaching!
Abstract submissions now open: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Date: December 18-19
Abstract deadline: October 15
Host: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution at KU Leuven
Plenary: Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
Abstract submissions now open: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Date: December 18-19
Abstract deadline: October 15
Host: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution at KU Leuven
Plenary: Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
September 13, 2025 at 7:22 AM
We are delighted that our Winter Meeting 2025 in Leuven 🇧🇪 is approaching!
Abstract submissions now open: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Date: December 18-19
Abstract deadline: October 15
Host: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution at KU Leuven
Plenary: Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
Abstract submissions now open: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings
Date: December 18-19
Abstract deadline: October 15
Host: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution at KU Leuven
Plenary: Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social
Free PDF of a highly recommended book: "High-Dimensional Regression Modeling" (2024) by Patrick Breheny and Jian Huang. myweb.uiowa.edu/pbreheny/7240/s25/book.pdf with reproducible R code at github.com/pbreheny/hdrm. Accompanying lecture notes & R scripts here: myweb.uiowa.edu/pbreheny/724....
myweb.uiowa.edu
August 27, 2025 at 8:53 AM
Free PDF of a highly recommended book: "High-Dimensional Regression Modeling" (2024) by Patrick Breheny and Jian Huang. myweb.uiowa.edu/pbreheny/7240/s25/book.pdf with reproducible R code at github.com/pbreheny/hdrm. Accompanying lecture notes & R scripts here: myweb.uiowa.edu/pbreheny/724....
Reposted by Tom Wenseleers
📌North-West European IUSSI Winter Meeting 2025
We are happy to announce that our next meeting on the 18–19 December 2025 will be in Leuven, Belgium, hosted by @twenseleers.bsky.social and his team.
Plenary speakers: Ido Pen & Rahia Mashoodh @rmash.bsky.social
More details to follow 🐝🐜🪳🪲
We are happy to announce that our next meeting on the 18–19 December 2025 will be in Leuven, Belgium, hosted by @twenseleers.bsky.social and his team.
Plenary speakers: Ido Pen & Rahia Mashoodh @rmash.bsky.social
More details to follow 🐝🐜🪳🪲
August 26, 2025 at 1:10 PM
📌North-West European IUSSI Winter Meeting 2025
We are happy to announce that our next meeting on the 18–19 December 2025 will be in Leuven, Belgium, hosted by @twenseleers.bsky.social and his team.
Plenary speakers: Ido Pen & Rahia Mashoodh @rmash.bsky.social
More details to follow 🐝🐜🪳🪲
We are happy to announce that our next meeting on the 18–19 December 2025 will be in Leuven, Belgium, hosted by @twenseleers.bsky.social and his team.
Plenary speakers: Ido Pen & Rahia Mashoodh @rmash.bsky.social
More details to follow 🐝🐜🪳🪲
Reposted by Tom Wenseleers
Honoured to see an article about my research on extra-pair paternity in @science.org. Many thanks to journalist @spoke32.bsky.social for the story and to all colleagues for their quotes!
Hopefully, future visitors to my office will be less surprised by a (reproduction) 17th-century painting...
Hopefully, future visitors to my office will be less surprised by a (reproduction) 17th-century painting...
How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers?
Tackling a touchy subject, genetic detective finds only 1% of European children have unexpected paternity
www.science.org
March 7, 2025 at 11:03 PM
Honoured to see an article about my research on extra-pair paternity in @science.org. Many thanks to journalist @spoke32.bsky.social for the story and to all colleagues for their quotes!
Hopefully, future visitors to my office will be less surprised by a (reproduction) 17th-century painting...
Hopefully, future visitors to my office will be less surprised by a (reproduction) 17th-century painting...
Cool new article out in Nature Communications by @hensniel.bsky.social and colleagues: "Assessing the role of children in the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium using perturbation analysis". www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Assessing the role of children in the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium using perturbation analysis - Nature Communications
Estimating the contribution of different age groups to COVID-19 epidemic dynamics is complicated by changing variants, non-pharmaceutical interventions, and vaccination levels. Here, the authors use l...
www.nature.com
March 9, 2025 at 8:28 AM
Cool new article out in Nature Communications by @hensniel.bsky.social and colleagues: "Assessing the role of children in the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium using perturbation analysis". www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Happy New Year to you all! My Christmas holidays involved helping my son make a DNA molecule model using a 3D pen & getting a new pet for him: leaf insects! Great fun!
January 4, 2025 at 10:47 PM
Happy New Year to you all! My Christmas holidays involved helping my son make a DNA molecule model using a 3D pen & getting a new pet for him: leaf insects! Great fun!
In first grade we just demonstrated a Makeblock robot with a mobile phone mounted on its back with ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode, to pretend the robot was able to talk! The kids & teacher absolutely loved it! It answered all the kids' questions for a full hour! It could even talk with a robot voice!
December 16, 2024 at 8:30 PM
In first grade we just demonstrated a Makeblock robot with a mobile phone mounted on its back with ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode, to pretend the robot was able to talk! The kids & teacher absolutely loved it! It answered all the kids' questions for a full hour! It could even talk with a robot voice!
Now that ChatGPT o1 actually supports image upload I thought I would give it that Mensa Norway IQ test once more, test.mensa.no/Home/Test/en, but out of the 35 puzzles it only manages to solve 20 within the given 25 min time limit & then ends with an IQ below 100. :-(
IQ Test Made by Mensa Norway - Mensa Norway
test.mensa.no
December 10, 2024 at 10:52 PM
Now that ChatGPT o1 actually supports image upload I thought I would give it that Mensa Norway IQ test once more, test.mensa.no/Home/Test/en, but out of the 35 puzzles it only manages to solve 20 within the given 25 min time limit & then ends with an IQ below 100. :-(
Reposted by Tom Wenseleers
A new platform, a new thread. Here's a thread explaining our recent work on #evolution in finite populations, now available ahead of print in @asn-amnat.bsky.social 🧬🧪
December 5, 2024 at 9:11 PM
A new platform, a new thread. Here's a thread explaining our recent work on #evolution in finite populations, now available ahead of print in @asn-amnat.bsky.social 🧬🧪
Reposted by Tom Wenseleers
Do you want to #model quantitative trait #evolution? Do you like #SPDEs? Happy to say my first solo author paper, now out in Theoretical Population Biology, is about just this! Check it out here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
I'm super proud of this y'all :')
#scisky 🧪 🧬 #mathsky #physics
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
I'm super proud of this y'all :')
#scisky 🧪 🧬 #mathsky #physics
December 3, 2024 at 7:19 PM
Do you want to #model quantitative trait #evolution? Do you like #SPDEs? Happy to say my first solo author paper, now out in Theoretical Population Biology, is about just this! Check it out here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
I'm super proud of this y'all :')
#scisky 🧪 🧬 #mathsky #physics
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
I'm super proud of this y'all :')
#scisky 🧪 🧬 #mathsky #physics
The lecture material of my latest data visualisation class in R, using both base R & ggplot, which was part of our Advanced Biological Data Analysis course here : www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0via9... #rstats
November 28, 2024 at 1:17 PM
The lecture material of my latest data visualisation class in R, using both base R & ggplot, which was part of our Advanced Biological Data Analysis course here : www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0via9... #rstats
Nice perspectives article about our earlier Current Biology study on the inheritance of alternative nest architectures in stingless bees led by my postdoc Viviana Di Pietro: link.springer.com/article/10.3... Original article here: www.researchgate.net/publication/...
November 28, 2024 at 1:07 PM
Nice perspectives article about our earlier Current Biology study on the inheritance of alternative nest architectures in stingless bees led by my postdoc Viviana Di Pietro: link.springer.com/article/10.3... Original article here: www.researchgate.net/publication/...
Reposted by Tom Wenseleers
Last Sunday, we had a blast at Day of Science! Truly amazing to see kids (and parents) having fun with Biology. We made bee hotels, gave some info and got them acquainted with some common social insect species in Belgium.
@kuleuven.bsky.social
@twenseleers.bsky.social
@kuleuven.bsky.social
@twenseleers.bsky.social
November 28, 2024 at 12:56 PM
Last Sunday, we had a blast at Day of Science! Truly amazing to see kids (and parents) having fun with Biology. We made bee hotels, gave some info and got them acquainted with some common social insect species in Belgium.
@kuleuven.bsky.social
@twenseleers.bsky.social
@kuleuven.bsky.social
@twenseleers.bsky.social
Ruben's self balancing robot just about made it to the finish line. Great fun those Makeblock robots! :-)
November 28, 2024 at 12:57 PM
Ruben's self balancing robot just about made it to the finish line. Great fun those Makeblock robots! :-)