Professor at the Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne
Dear social insect lovers, dear friends and colleagues,
We are excited to host the European meeting of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects (IUSSI) in Lausanne, Switzerland, 07.-11. July 2024.
The meeting will bring together researchers working on a diverse range of topics including (but not limited to) reproductive strategies, collective behaviour, division of labour, neuroethology, social genetics and genomics, disease and immunity, chemical ecology, morphology and systematics, evolution, biodiversity, community ecology and biogeography of social insects in a stimulating and friendly atmosphere. The full list of symposia can be found here:
If your work does not fit with any of the proposed symposia, you may submit an abstract to the open sessions.
We will be hosted by the University of Lausanne, which is ideally located next to the lake of Geneva, with some sandy beaches and many cafes and summer bars installed along the lakeside. In July, the weather is usually sunny and temperatures around 25°C, allowing you to enjoy swimming in the lake. The famous UNESCO-heritage Lavaux vineyards are close by, and the mountains (Alps and Jura mountains) can be reached within less than one hour.
The registration for the conference will include three and a half days for scientific sessions, plenaries and posters, a half day for excursions in our region, a welcome reception, and a banquet on the final evening.
More details on our half-day excursions that include a boat ride and visit to the Chillon castle, a hike and panoramic view on Rocher-de-Naye, a visit to a supercolony of wood ants or wine tasting in Lavaux (you will need to pick your favorites!) can be found here: https://wp.unil.ch/iussi-europe-2024/excursions/
Our invited plenary speakers are Bonnie Blaimer (MfN Berlin, Germany), Daniel Kronauer (Rockefeller University, USA), Lars Chittka (Queen Mary University, UK), Patrizia d’Ettorre (University Paris Sorbonne Nord, France) and Susanne Foitzik (University of Mainz, Germany).
On behalf of the organizing committee, I invite you to join us in Lausanne in 2024 and help us make this meeting amazing.
with Long Seh Ling, Gan Jason Yew Seng and Loke Wei Qi
If someone were to ask any scientist to sum up his reason for doing science in one word, the answer would most likely be : CURIOSITY
In this blog post Yek Sze Huei and coauthors tell us how their curiosity resulted in their latest publication out in Insectes Sociauxsurveying ant predation on turtle nesting beaches which resulted in an innovative elevated incubation system important for sea turtle conservation.
Ant infestations have been detected on sea turtle nesting beaches since the early 1990s on the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Sea turtle conservationists take note of these infestations but rarely keep a consistent record of these lesser-known interactions. This had piqued the interest of an intern at Lang Tengah Turtle Watch (LTTW), a sea turtle conservation organization, to work on his invasive ant research during his internship.
Jason: My eyes lit up when Sze Huei told me about the opportunity in 2019. “There’s a sea turtle NGO on Lang Tengah Island,” she said. “Maybe get to know them and the island and it’ll make your job of collecting ant samples a bit easier?” Next thing you know, I’m on a small speedboat heading for a remote island in the South China Sea. During the day, I was making sure my pitfall traps weren’t flooded by unpredictable rains and at nighttime, I was patrolling nesting beaches, ensuring sea turtle mothers were free from disturbance and their eggs safe from poaching.
Foto 1: The hatchery where ant predation was detected. Jason Gan@LTTW
Jason: This led me to becoming a full-time sea turtle conservationist in 2020 after concluding my research with Sze Huei on yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes) on Lang Tengah Island. In 2021, while excavating green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) nests on one of the nesting beaches in mainland Terengganu, Malaysia, we stumbled upon a shocking but fascinating discovery: sea turtle hatchlings (some even still alive) were being eaten by ants. I had to get in touch with Sze Huei – there were so many questions that needed to be answered!
Foto 2: D. laevigatus ants attacking newly emerged hatchlings. Photo credit Jason Gan@LTTW
Foto 3: Close up of D. laevigatus ants attacking newly emerged hatclings. Photo credit Long Seh Ling@LTTW
The dual interests of Jason connected Sze Huei Yek (his academic supervisor) and Seh Ling Long (his workplace supervisor) with the hopes of getting a clearer picture of the infestation pattern, factors of predation and the ant species responsible for these attacks.
Hence the birth of this short report that sheds light on the impact of ant predation on sea turtle eggs and hatchlings on the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia, a critical nesting site for green and hawksbill turtles.
We contacted sea turtle conservation NGOs that keep consistent records and were willing to share their data with us — many expressed interest. However, only some kept the same data quality we required to compute ant predation rate. During our time of data collection, Bubbles Dive Resort, a small sea turtle conservation organization, was experiencing heavy ant infestation and was trying out an innovative ant-proof incubation method.
Wei Qi: During the regular nesting years there usually weren’t any ant predations on the project site at Bubbles Dive Resort. Predation began in June 2022 where it was quite fast and sudden. It started with two nests that were hatching. Due to safety precautions the team quickly checked the other nests that were still incubating in the hatchery and found out that all of them already had ants cutting into the turtle eggs and consuming their contents.
Wei Qi: We got involved in the study as we started asking around other projects if they had encountered a similar problem. We were hoping to find a solution that could work for our location or if this incident was new, to let other projects know that it could be a potential problem in the future. We found out that this problem was more prevalent than we thought. We got involved with this paper after speaking with Sze Huei. Wei Qi: There were a few different things that we did to counter the ant problem. Based on past literature, our hatchery was built with a minimum distance of 1 meter from the tree line, however that proved to be insufficient as the ants managed to tunnel to the hatchery and got around through the hatchery wall instead of a root network. Eventually our nests were elevated and incubated in buckets, away from the raiding territory of the predatory ants (Dorylus laevigatus). After the nests had been elevated for a significant amount of time, the ants finally left the area due to the lack of a food source.
Seh Ling: As ant predation is not always recorded, it is hard to gauge the severity of egg and hatchling mortality caused by ants. Therefore, standardizing ant predation recording across all sea turtle organizations where predation on both eggs and hatchlings are consistently recorded will provide a better picture of the scale of ant predation and its impact on the survival of sea turtles. Furthermore, by engaging with ant researchers, we are able to identify ant species and understand the ants’ behavior, in hopes to develop more effective strategies to mitigate ant predation on sea turtle nests.
Foto 5: Quantifying hatchling success rate & types of predation. Photo credit Azrin Asyikin binti Mohd Shukor@LTTW
Sze Huei: From an ant researcher’s perspective, it’s interesting to document this behavior of underground driver ants. Have nesting beaches always been these ants’ hunting ground? Can we (ant researchers and sea turtle conservationists) work together to predict ant predation and bait these destructive predators away from the nesting beaches? These are essential questions that urgently need addressing to ensure the long-term conservation of the sea turtles of Malaysia.
insectessociaux 