Postdoc @HarvardOEB. Into brains, behaviour, evolution, and individuality. Previously @RockefellerUniv, @BalliolOxford.
Cambridge, MA
Joined December 2012
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Now out in @PNASNews: our paper on how army ants evolved their famous ability to raid prey ant colonies en masse. We identify their ancestral mode of foraging as rather different scout-initiated group raids (like in this video: nitter.gq/DanielKronauer/status/…), and...
Scout-initiated group raiding in ants is an incredibly rich collective behavior that can now be studied in the lab. Exciting new @biorxivpreprint from our lab @RockefellerUniv with @VChandra_ & @asafffgal biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…. (1/8)
Vikram Chandra retweeted
The ant colonies are plagued by impostors: parasitic ants that resemble queens. They greedily eat the colony’s food, but shirk their own foraging duties, and can only hatch more parasites instead of workers when they reproduce. nyti.ms/3ESs9Dg
Vikram Chandra retweeted
Hey friends, today our 7-year queen-like mutant project is out in Current Biology. These mutant raider ants show the core traits of parasitic ant species, but arose in a laboratory stock just a handful of generations before we discovered them -- probably due to a mutant supergene
Vikram Chandra retweeted
A natural caste mutant in the clonal raider ant sheds light on a controversial topic: the evolution of socially parasitic ants. Paper led by @buck_trible just dropped. With @VChandra_, @MendelsLOLs, @Gina_Lim0n, @Dorylophile, @leonoraoc, and Sam Arsenault. authors.elsevier.com/sd/arti…
Vikram Chandra retweeted
A big chunk of my PhD work is finally out @CellCellPress !! I want to thank Dr. Marcela Bolaños, Dr. Lorenzo Ricci, Mansi, and the Srivastava Lab @acoel_hofstenia, as this project was not possible without their help.
cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092…
Vikram Chandra retweeted
Ever wonder where adult pluripotent stem cells such as neoblasts come from? Check out the work of @Kimura_Julian, Marce Bolaños, and Lorenzo Ricci out today. We identified embryonic origins of neoblasts in Hofstenia embryos. authors.elsevier.com/a/1gDLW…
Vikram Chandra retweeted
(1/5) My first paper on ants with @DanielKronauer is out! We discovered that ant pupae secrete the molting fluid, and adults and larvae drink it. Young larvae need the fluid for growth and survival, and pupae die if the fluid is not removed. Open access: nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
Vikram Chandra retweeted
Shazam! Here is the reveal: ant pupae secrete their molting fluid, and larvae and adults consume it. This creates interdependencies across different ant developmental stages. Thanks also to all our collaborators at the various resource centers @RockefellerUniv!
(1/5) My first paper on ants with @DanielKronauer is out! We discovered that ant pupae secrete the molting fluid, and adults and larvae drink it. Young larvae need the fluid for growth and survival, and pupae die if the fluid is not removed. Open access: nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
Vikram Chandra retweeted
Paper is out! #Drosophila 'know' what's best! Flies build an internal expectation of the substrate options in their environment and use it to make informed egg-laying decisions. science.org/doi/10.1126/scia…
[fly exploring options before laying an egg on the best one, 20x speed]🧵(1/7)
Vikram Chandra retweeted
Paper out!!! #Drosophila has muscles that attach to their retinas, which it uses to move its photoreceptor sheet in ways that resemble vertebrate eye movements @Nature nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
Vikram Chandra retweeted
The del Mármol lab has officially launched! And I have finally come around to making a website delmarmol.hms.harvard.edu
We are hiring postdocs! If you are interested in molecular mechanisms of olfaction, please apply, and help me spread the word!
Vikram Chandra retweeted
Do you work with hemimetabolous #insects? Shed tears of envy over transgenic flies and genetically modified #CRISPR mosquitoes? Let's change the game! Help us choose species of Hemimetabola for functional #genetics tool improvement & development! tinyurl.com/4vkkj4h2
Vikram Chandra retweeted
Early stocking stuffer idea: "glowworms" (non-arthropod) for every biologist in your life. Our paper on transgenesis in Hofstenia is now online @Dev_Cell: authors.elsevier.com/a/1e2T-…
Vikram Chandra retweeted
(1/13) Posted my 2nd preprint!
Can flies build/update a "model" of their environment and use it to guide decisions?
We tracked flies as they decided whether to lay eggs and inferred what they "know" about their local environment.
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Incredible lab, research programme, and university. And now the ability to do serious neuroscience with a serious social insect. Apply!
Wanna work on an ant that combines the best of social insect biology with genetic accessibility? My lab @RockefellerUniv is looking for postdocs w backgrounds in neuroscience, single-cell genomics, or collective behavior to join our team. Please RT, and DM/email if interested.
Vikram Chandra retweeted
(1/12) Posted my 1st preprint!
Curious to know what might happen in your brain as you browse a restaurant menu?
We find a rise-to-threshold neural signal that dictates a "similar" decision in flies!
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
🎉🎉🎉
Fantastic news, and I’m v excited for a future of even more #CRAP! 🐜🐜
In today’s ant news: this happened. Still hard to believe… Thank you @HHMINEWS for supporting our research, and Go Ants, with your weird little secrets! 🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜Thanks to all the amazing #CRAP lab members @RockefellerUniv, past and present. This is for and because of you.
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Vikram Chandra retweeted
A belated update: After a great time at @usys_ethzh, I’m thrilled to join the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology with my group. Thanks @MPI_CE for the warm welcome! We'll be hiring soon—if you're interested in social behavior, disease spread, or ants, please get in touch!
Vikram Chandra retweeted
Tour-de-force paper from Josefina del Marmol and Vanessa Ruta @RockefellerUniv
The first structure of any odorant receptor binding a ligand. In this figure, the ligand is the bug spray DEET
rdcu.be/csbex
