Lisa Fenk

🚨Last day to vote 🚨 Dear #ISN members, until TOMORROW you have the chance to have a say in the future leadership of our society and you can choose you favourite site for #ISN2030 - Vienna 🇦🇹 or Los Angeles 🇺🇲? Please vote 🗳 if you have not alredy done so and share widely 🤗 #Neuroethology 🧠🧪

Many thanks to @lochlanw.bsky.social and @prelights.bsky.social for highlighting our preprint!

Revised preprint on mitochondria in central brain of Drosophila now online: much new analysis + details of largest resource for analyzing neuronal mitochondria generated so far, with ~6M mitochondria, >20k neurons, >5k cell types. Much thanks to all coauthors, enjoy! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵 New paper! We’re excited to release OPTICS: software that immediately predicts color sensitivity from any opsin protein sequence. In other words: give OPTICS any opsin sequence, and it predicts the wavelength of light the pigment is most sensitive to 🌈👁️ academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

A day full of science, curiosity, and connection! It was wonderful to see the community come together to share knowledge and push the boundaries of interdisciplinary neuroscience – exactly what the Munich Brain Day is all about. 🧠 ✨ ➡️ munichbrainday.com @mpi-psychiatry.bsky.social @lmu.de @tum.de

Last call for this awesome opportunity: www.czbiohub.org/program-mpi-.... If you hold a US-PhD degree and want to join one of the labs at the @mpi-cbg.de or @mpipks.bsky.social for a fully-funded postdoc, apply! Deadline is May 20.

I am hiring a PhD student to join our group in Lund, Sweden working on an ERC-funded project to untangle color and polarization vision in some amazing crustaceans – minute water fleas and pugnacious mantis shrimp! Please forward this to promising students. Apply here: lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

🐟+🐚 =🏠 Shell-dwelling cichlids are true underwater architects, instinctively transforming empty snail shells into protective nests. New research shows: They improve with practice, remember what they learned, and adapt to unusual conditions. 🔗 Press release: www.bi.mpg.de/news/2026-04...

If you'd be interested in a postdoc with us using CT scans of trilobite eyes to model their visual abilities, watch this space...!

*First preprint from our lab* !!!!! How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭 led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman: “Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Thread ⬇️

How do neural circuits generate the walking rhythm? Using connectome simulations, @sarahpugly.bsky.social found a minimal central pattern generator (CPG) that produces oscillations in leg motor neurons. Same circuit motif for each 🪰 leg. w @bingbrunton.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too! preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧵 Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/9

Jumping spiders can recognise one another. This ability to learn, remember and represent images is quite surprising for such a tiny-brained animal! buff.ly/dCkwPr0

🌍Open call: Junior Group Leader positions! Join a world-class biomedical research institute at the heart of the Vienna BioCenter, where curiosity drives discovery. Lead your own lab, pursue bold ideas, and shape the future of science at the IMP: www.imp.ac.at/career/open-...

Excited to announce our new pre-print (www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...)! This collaborative work (co-led by Adriane Otopalik and Gerry Rubin) examines how neuronal circuits regulate social behaviors, like courtship🫶 and aggression🥊, across sexes. #neuroscience #Drosophila #WomenInSTEM 🧪1/

Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint: “Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We describe the #connectomics reconstruction and analysis of an entire adult #maleCNS #drosophila central nervous system. 1/10

Apply now to become a speaker at our Institute! We invite excellent postdocs in neuroscience, ecology and other fields related to our research to apply for our Emerging Scientist Talk Series. Apply by October 24: www.bi.mpg.de/ess @chr-mayer.bsky.social @fleyes.bsky.social @michaelahau.bsky.social

Come to the MBL in Woods Hole @mblscience.bsky.social for a GRASS FELLOWSHIP @grassfoundation.bsky.social 🦑 🐙🐛 There are two application deadlines this year: Oct 15, 2025 (submit by then to receive feedback on your application!), and Dec 1, 2025 (final deadline). grassfoundation.org/application-...

Job Alert! The University of Tübingen is hiring a FULL PROFESSOR (W3) in FUNCTIONAL ECOLOGY! Come and join our institute, and maybe our new excellence clusters @terra-cluster.org and @greenrobust.de. @gfoesoc.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social Please repost!

New preprint from @darbly.bsky.social‬ @briandepasquale.bsky.social‬ and my labs! If you love (or hate) mosquitoes, have a look: doi.org/10.1101/2025... We used TEM to describe the circuitry used for CO2 detection by mosquitoes. As usual with mosquitoes, nothing is as expected! 🌬️🦟

Happy Friday! The female adult fly brain-and-nerve-cord (BANC) connectome is now LIVE! Explore the data here: codex.flywire.ai?dataset=banc Check out the preprint here: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Now out in @natneuro.nature.com: Temporal control of progenitor competence shapes maturation in GABAergic neuron development in mice. Congrats to first authors @annrosebright.bsky.social, Yana Kotlyarenko, @flo-neuhaus.bsky.social, and thanks to all collaborators! www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/n

cool new paper in @nature.com about moth migration, showing they use the stars to navigate up to the mountains in the summer 🧪🌍🐙 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Neural Systems & Behavior Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory is going to be looking for a co-director. If you're a faculty member who is interested in helping to organize and run this incredible course, submit a brief statement and your CV at this website. www.mbl.edu/education/ad...

Are you interested in visual systems? How are they similar or different across species? Read the review by Ryosuke @ryosuketanaka.bsky.social and Ruben published today in @natrevneuro.nature.com. It is available here: rdcu.be/enlpC

Interested in a PhD connecting sensory ecology and evolutionary genetics? Applications are now open for a project on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size Variation in Heliconius Butterflies in our lab at LMU Munich: www.evol.bio.lmu.de/research/mer... Please repost!

Today, I signed my first contract as a principal investigator @uni-wuerzburg.de. My Emmy-Noether group can now officially start on 1st of May. If someone is interested working with me on the spatial memory of 🐝 as a PhD student or postdoc, contact me. More details: www.spatial-navigation.com

😳 #FirstInFly as often! www.nature.com/articles/s41... #DrosoFeed

I know there's a 𝒍𝒐𝒕 going on right now, but I couldn’t be prouder to share this long-incubated labor of love: the complete connectome of the male 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 optic lobe 🧠🪰 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🪰A connectome of the fruit fly visual system & classification of its 53K neurons unlock new possibilities for probing vision in fruit flies hhmi.news/3XyqYCy 🔗Read more about these #openscience tools from our FlyEM Project Team & collaborators, first published as a 2024 #preprint: hhmi.news/4iIsavL

Let me introduce our new lab homepage. www.spatial-navigation.com We are looking for PhD students and one Postdoc that can start in November 2025. Contact me if you are in to studying spatial memory of honeybees. @uni-wuerzburg.de @neuroethology.org

📢 🚨 Postdoc Opportunity 📢 🚨 Join us at @lmumuenchen.bsky.social to study how neural circuits 🧠 drive adaptive behavior. The lab uses state-of-the-art neuroscience technologies and offers a supportive environment 🤗! ⏳ Deadline: 15. April 2025 Learn more and apply: www.fens.org/careers/job-...

Spatial transcriptomics in fly brain and body. Wonderful collaboration with @steinaerts.bsky.social led by @jasperjanssens.bsky.social @pierremangeol.bsky.social Nikolai Hecker & Gabriele Partel - look at mRNA patterns in muscles and brains spatialfly.aertslab.org elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

From receptors to circuits: Join our next keynote lecture on mechanisms of adaptive behavior by neuroscientist @rockefelleruniv.bsky.social Vanessa Ruta! TODAY, February 18 at 11am in NQ105 in Martinsried Art by @somedonkey.bsky.social

We are hiring a new (Senior) Lab Research scientist to work in our team together with @antoniotorm.bsky.social to understand how virus alter neural circuit function to manipulate behavior. More details and how to apply: crick.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...

A single gene underlies male mating morphs in ruff sandpipers, a new Science study finds. The results show how evolutionary changes in a single gene's structure, sequence, and regulation can drive significant diversity within a single species. Learn more in our new issue: https://scim.ag/4arzNmU

I'm thrilled to be opening my own lab this Fall at the @maxplanck.de MPI for Brain Research in Frankfurt. The lab is going to investigate the neuronal and genetic underpinnings of behavioral evolution. We are hiring on all levels. Don't hesitate to share widely and reach out if interested.

Sharing my new paper again since moving from the other place 🙂 We shed light on some of the most rapidly evolving animal behaviors—those surrounding mating.

Want to perform HIGH EFFICIENCY Homology Directed Repair in Drosophila spp? Try Atalanta plasmids. About 10X higher efficiency than other methods! Tag or delete genes, invert chromosome regions, make scarless site-specific modifications. All with easy cloning. This paper is proudly bioRxiv only!

Early vision Neuroscience community, Vol 1 We are talking eyes, retinas, and some of the more ancestral bits of visual brains. No species restrictions. List is close to full, will start building Vol 2 before too long Addition requests, please see link in the below thread go.bsky.app/BotZr1g

Wireless recordings from dragonfly target detecting neurons during prey interception flight. Interestingly, the classic target detector neurons (TSDNs) appear to control foveating head movements during flight, not prey capture. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...