scientist, science communicator, mom, prof, desert dweller - not always in this order
Anna Dornhaus
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Many species on Earth can learn & do many of the things we think of as 'intelligent'. None have the language and abstract thinking skills of humans, and we have no idea what would lead to evolution of human intelligence. Astrobiology & anthropology are both failing to tackle this problem.
@joannamasel.bsky.social
New preprint - essay - orphaned book chapter? Thinking about thinking aliens. How can we estimate how likely it is that life evolves 'intelligence'? ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... This is probably the article that got me on Netflix in 'Alien Worlds'... Where should I submit this 'for real'?
Lecture on what we can learn from collective behavior about the world in general - www.youtube.com/watch?v=oioL...: algorithmic thinking, how to make groups behave better, how to get at truth despite our failing intuition
The classic role of models in physics is to derive predictions from an already-quantitative hypothesis. This is NOT what most models in biology do! In biology, models far more often prove a general principle that was not intuitive from a verbal hypothesis alone.
Case in point: shared mutualists or other consumers may help or hinder, i.e. cause facilitation or competition, even when limiting. The model demonstrates this principle even though competition seems the 'intuitive' outcome from verbal argument alone. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
Preprint: What good is modeling? Introducing biology students to theory - arxiv.org/abs/2604.13344 - how to teach and think about what modeling contributes to science. How does it fit into the scientific method? This is often misunderstood.
📣 SEMINAR SERIES 2026 📣
Our first seminar of the year is coming up fast! 🐜🐝
🎥 Check out this teaser! Come listen to Dr. Anna Dornhaus ( @dornhaus.bsky.social ) to hear about “What we learned about the world from studying collective behavior: algorithms, replicators, and strong inference”
Paper alert 🚨🐜! Fire ant foraging looks remarkably robust until you perturb their communication. @dornhaus.bsky.social and I tested how fire ants respond to disruptions in pheromone trail communication during foraging. More in the thread below 🧵(1/6).
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
