Timothy Linksvayer
Arizona State University Campus Immersion, AZ·Ecology & Evolution
In ant colonies, queens reproduce while workers do nearly everything else. In most ant species, workers keep small reproductive organs and can reproduce if the queen dies.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Genetics
Biology
- Topics
ants
social insects
caste
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2026
What they work on
- Identify the gene regulatory networks that control the development of obligate sterility in ant workers, which completely lack reproductive organs.
- Test whether the at least 14 independent origins of worker sterility in ants share convergent or parallel molecular mechanisms, or rely on different ones.
- Validate the effects of candidate genes that influence sterility development by studying them in fruit flies, testing whether ant reproductive pathways are conserved.
More about the research
In others, workers lack reproductive organs entirely. This permanent, or obligate, sterility has evolved independently at least 14 times across ants. It offers a natural experiment in how genes and development produce new traits, and in whether evolution reuses the same molecular routes when it arrives at the same outcome repeatedly.
Why it matters
This is mainly basic research on how development and evolution produce complex traits. By identifying genes that control reproductive organ development in ants and checking them in fruit flies, the work could reveal conserved pathways that regulate animal reproduction. These candidates could later be studied in model organisms for their links to reproductive health.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Leslie Pick
University of Maryland, MD·Genetics
Determine how the milkweed bug Oncopeltus achieves pair-rule segment patterning without the canonical pair-rule genes used by Drosophila, using expression analysis, RNA interference and CRISPR/Cas9.
Eric Haag
University of Maryland, MD·Genetics
Reconstruct how FOG-2, a protein found only in C. elegans, evolved from a large family of F-box proteins to become an essential regulator that lets hermaphrodite worms make sperm.
Patricia Wittkopp
University of Michigan, MI·Genetics
Identify the genes and specific DNA changes behind trait differences within and between fruit fly (Drosophila) species, and determine how they alter molecular, cellular and developmental processes.
The school
Arizona State University Campus Immersion: 36 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 625 research doctorates a year.
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