Joe Parker

[58chevy]

https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/insid ... &utm_term=

[Chuck]

Thanks for posting that!

That's a different perspective, what a neat idea.

[alandmor]

Here's an excellent presentation on YouTube by Joseph Parker on the evolution of how staphylinid beetles interact with their ant hosts and become integrated into their colonies. Pretty fascinating stuff.



In his December 11 Watson Lecture, titled “How to Deceive Society: An Insect Masterclass,” Joe Parker, assistant professor of biology and biological engineering, discusses his work on rove beetles (Staphylinidae)—arch tricksters capable of assimilating into ant colonies to exploit their social hosts undetected.

Parker’s research uses rove beetles and their relationship with ants as a unique model system to understand the mechanisms that underpin how different organisms interact with each other. His work is shedding light on molecular and cellular phenomena that shape how animals perceive and communicate with other living organisms and evolve to forge new kinds of social relationships. His laboratory’s work is highly integrative, combining genomics and molecular biology with chemical ecology and behavioral neuroscience to explore all facets of the ant-beetle interaction and its evolutionary origins. He and his team have found that the ant-beetle symbiosis has evolved not just once but independently many times in Staphylinidae, often leading to extremely similar adaptations in widely separate lineages. Parker’s laboratory is probing this dramatic example of convergent evolution to understand how complex evolutionary changes can arise repeatedly and predictably across the tree of life.