Reproductive and worker castes of termites differ greatly in their morphology and behavior but also in their fertility and longevity. Kings and queens of the highly social termite, Macrotermes natalensis, live for decades, with the queen laying thousands of eggs per day. Workers are sterile and only live a few weeks. In our HFSP project, we investigated the regulatory mechanisms involved in generating such diverse phenotypes. Our previous results indicate that well-regulated transcription allows reproductive castes to overcome simultaneously several well-known hallmarks of aging.

When the Sahel is mentioned today, this semi-arid African region between the Sahara and Sudanian Africa is often associated with the notion of desertification. But what do the latest advances in environmental science tell us about this desertification? To what extent is the “narrative” of Sahel desertification based on scientific results, or on other mechanisms, of a more political nature?

Emmanuelle d’Alençon (UMR DGIMI, Montpellier) and Emmanuelle Jacquin-Joly (UMR iEES-Paris CReA –EcoSens, Versailles) had the pleasure of organizing the 11th international workshop on the molecular biology and genomics of the Lepidoptera. For nearly 30 years, this workshop has brought together the international scientific community working on butterflies and moths every 3 years. Thirteen nationalities met this […]