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Welcome / Bienvenue

My name is Joël Meunier. I am an evolutionary biologist studying multiple aspects of social life and social evolution in insects.

Mon nom est Joël Meunier. Je suis chercheur au CNRS et j'étudie l'évolution de la vie sociale chez les insectes.

Contacts

Institut de Recherche sur la Biologie de l’Insecte - UMR CNRS 7261

Université de Tours 
UFR Sciences et Techniques

Avenue Monge, Parc Grandmont
37200 Tours, FRANCE

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Team ESORE webpage (link)

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Email: joel[dot]meunier[At]univ-tours[dot]fr

Phone: +33 (0)2 47 36 73 93

Fax: +33 (0)2 47 36 69 66

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What's new in our group? / Quoi de neuf dans notre équipe ?

20 March 2024

New paper accepted in Behavioural Ecology

Congratulations to Marie-Charlotte for her first paper on earwigs. In this study, she investigated whether the expression of aggregation behaviour by female earwigs might be linked to their gut microbiota. We videotaped 320 females collected in the field to quantify their natural variation in aggregation, and then tested whether the most and least gregarious females had different gut microbiota. We also compared the general activity, boldness, body size and condition of these females and examined the association between each of these traits and gut microbiota. Contrary to our predictions, we found no difference in gut microbiota between the most and least sociable females. There was also no difference in activity, boldness and body condition between these two types of females. Independent of aggregation, gut microbiota was associated with female body condition, but not with any of our other measurements. Overall, these results show that host gut microbiota are not necessarily a major driver or consequence of aggregation behaviour in species with inter-individual variation in group living, and call for future studies to investigate the determinants and role of gut microbiota in earwigs. This project was funded by the ANR MicroSoc project.

01 February 2024

New paper out in Annual Review of Entomology

It has taken a lot of time and energy, but I am delighted to announce that my review of everything we know about the biology and social life of earwigs has finally been published in the Annual Review of Entomology. In this study, I detail the diversity of social behaviours that are known to occur in earwigs (in general) and show how further development of this knowledge in Dermaptera can improve our general understanding of the early evolution of social life in insects. I hope you gonna like it!

08 January 2024

Alice Roux, Jade fontaine and Mattéo Dorvillé join the team for their Master 2 projects

Welcome Alice, Jade and Mattéo! Alice's project is to disentangle the effects of global warming and heat waves on maternal care in earwigs. This is a collaboration with Irene Villalta. Jade's project is to investigate the role of microbiota on the biology and behaviour of earwigs. This is a collaboration with Marie-Charlotte Cheutin. Finally, Mattéo's project will test the effects of ivermectine on the behaviour and chemical communication of body lice. This last project is a collaboration with Françoise Debierre and Foteini Koutroumpa, financed by the Fédération de Recherche en Infectiologie (FéRI). We are delighted to welcome you all and wish you every success in your respective projects.

01 October 2023

Simon de Wever joins the team as PhD Student

It is a great honour to welcome Simon back as a PhD student in the earwig group. Simon did a first internship with us a few years ago, then studied ant behaviour in Germany for his Master's thesis, and then spent a few years as a biology teacher in France. Strengthened by all these different experiences, Simon will now start his PhD to explore the fascinating world of social immunity in earwigs. In particular, his project will investigate how family life allows individuals to improve their protection against pathogen infection, and how the presence of pathogens can modify the evolution of family life in species where it is still facultative. This project is funded by the Doctoral School SSBCV and the Centre-Val de Loire region.

01 September 2023

Violette Wallart joins the team as Assistant Engineer

We are delighted to welcome Violette Wallart as a new engineering assistant (AI) to the team. During her stay, she will be helping us to develop molecular tools to better understand the genetic and hormonal regulation of maternal care (and other social behaviours) in earwigs, as well as to decipher the effects of several pesticides on these behaviours. Welcome to Violette! Her position has been funded by a grant from the Centre Val de Loire Region.

01 July 2023

Romain Honorio obtains a tenure Assist. Professor position in Paris!

We are delighted to share this fantastic news with you. After two years of working with us on the effects of chemical pollution on earwigs, Romain has been offered a permanent assistant professorship at the Laboratoire d'Ethologie Expérimentale et Comparée (LEEC) at the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord (USPN). There he will set up his group to study the effects of chemical pollution on ants (his first love as a PhD student). Romain, it has been a great pleasure and honour to have you with us over the last two years and this success is more than well deserved. We wish you all the best in your new adventure and hope that you'll never forget that earwigs are social insects.

23 Feburary 2023

New paper accepted in Behavioral Ecology on the effect of cadmium on post-hatching maternal care

In this study, we investigated the effect of a common heavy metal pollutant, cadmium, on post-hatching maternal care and juvenile development in the European earwig. We fed earwig families with five different cadmium concentrations, and measured ten parameters related to offspring care, non-care maternal behaviours, investment in maternal care and two parameters of offspring development. Somewhat surprisingly, we found no effect of cadmium ingestion on any of the parameters measured, except for maternal self-grooming behaviour. The ingestion of cadmium by group members did not result in an overall decrease in the expression of care by the contaminated mothers or in an overall higher level of care received by the contaminated offspring. By contrast, mothers fed the highest dose of cadmium showed an increase in self-grooming. Overall, this study raises questions about whether and how parent-offspring interactions can alter the negative effects of contaminated environments in social species. This is the second manuscript of Romain Honorio's postdoctoral project.

04 Feburary 2023

One new PhD position open!!!

We offer a PhD position to study the role of social immunity in the (early) evolution of social life in insects. If you have a strong background in evolutionary biology and/or behavioural ecology. If you have an interest in using computational tools to study behaviour and social networks. If you are motivated, energetic, independent and a good team player: you should definitely apply!

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Starting date is October 2023. The application deadline is 27 March 2023. All details about the project and the application process can be found at the link above. You can also email me if you have any questions

03 January 2023

Julie GroustchLisa Le Roux, and Wilfrid Jean-Louis joined the team for their Master 2 project

We are delighted to host Julie, Lisa and Wilfrid's M2 project. Julie will be investigating the effects of pesticide exposure of earwig mothers and eggs on the expression of maternal care and the resulting effects on offspring gene expression. This project will be supervised together with Charlotte Lécureuil. Lisa will investigate the effects of heat waves during development on maternal care and the future thermal resistance of juveniles. Lisa will be supervised together with Irene Villalta. Finally, Wilfrid will investigate the diversity of the earwig immune system and the cost of care on maternal investment in this immune system. His project will be co-supervised with Christine Bracquart-Varnier and Julien Verdon (Univ. Poitiers).

4 November 2022

New paper accepted in Insectes sociaux that describes maternal egg care in a new earwig species 

Maternal egg care is generally considered to be ubiquitous among the 1,700 species of free-living Dermaptera. However, the forms, costs, and benefits of egg care have only been studied in a handful of species. In this study, we demonstrated for the first time that Forficula pubescens mothers express multiple forms of egg care including egg grooming, egg guarding, and active defences against predators, some of which vary with clutch size. However, maternal presence had contrasting effects on the eggs’ fate. On one hand, it reduced the survival of eggs during their first 30 days of development, which suggests that mothers eat part of their clutch during egg development and, contrary to other Dermapterans, that abandoned eggs can resist fungal development. On the other hand, maternal presence was necessary to allow the remaining eggs to hatch on day 53, indicating that mothers enhance late embryonic development and/or facilitate the hatching process. Finally, our results did not shed light on the costs of egg care for mothers in terms of premature death, reduced expression of self-grooming, or increased weight loss. This manuscript is based on the Master project of Nicolas Mouret. 

01 October 2022

Laura Pasquier join the team as a PhD student

It is a great honour to welcome Laura as a PhD student in the earwig group. After studying the effects of pesticides on female reproduction in mice during her Master's degree, Laura will now study whether and how pesticides exposure can influence the evolution of family life in earwigs. Her project also aims to explore the potential use of earwigs as a biomarker of pesticide contamination in nature. This project will befinanced by the national program Ecophyto (project BioIndicFin) and the Région Centre-Val de Loire (APR-IA, Project DisruptCare). Laura will be co-supervised together with Charlotte Lécureuil.

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