Krzysztof Miler

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• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences

Brain lateralization is hypothesized to improve the efficiency of information processing. Here, we found that some Myrmeleon bore antlion larvae showed individual asymmetry in righting from a supine to normal position over one side of their body, which can be considered a reflection of greater brain lateralization. We demonstrated that these behavi...

The honeybee continues to be developed as a model species in many research areas, including studies related to the effects of alcohol. Here, we investigate whether workers display one of the key features of alcoholism, namely withdrawal symptoms. We show that workers fed for a prolonged time on food spiked with ethanol, after discontinuation of acc...

Although ambush predators were previously considered limited in their cognitive abilities compared to their widely foraging relatives, there is accumulating evidence it does not hold true. Pit-building antlions are already known to associate vibrations in the sand with the arrival of prey. We used a T-maze and successfully trained antlions to turn...

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are one of the most crucial pollinators, providing vital ecosystem services. Their development and functioning depend on essential nutrients and substances found in the environment. While collecting nectar as a vital carbohydrate source, bees routinely encounter low doses of ethanol from yeast fermentation. Yet, the effe...

Simple Summary Ants provide an outstanding example of organisms capable of risky acts. When ants engage in rescue behavior, for example, they do so for a chance of saving another individual from a dangerous situation. What contributes to whether a particular ant engages in rescue behavior? Why do some species of ants show high rescue activity while...

Honeybees encounter low environmental doses of ethanol, primarily through fermenting nectar, which can have both beneficial and detrimental effects on their functioning. Yet, ethanol traces can also be detected in the crop of caged bees with no access to environmental food sources. This raises the possibility that endogenous ethanol accumulation co...

Ethanol is a neuroactive compound that alters affect and cognition in humans and other vertebrates, but its effect on affective-like states in invertebrates remain remains unknown. In this study, we tested whether exposure of honeybees to field-realistic ethanol concentrations (1%) induces 'pessimistic' or 'optimistic' cognitive judgment bias (CJB)...

Previous studies on various organisms have suggested that low doses of ethanol can have stimulatory effects, while higher doses may lead to toxicity, a response known as hormesis. Low ethanol concentrations occur naturally in the environment, particularly in fermenting fruits and flower nectar, where pollinators such as honey bees may encounter it....

Parasitic infections often alter host behavior, including foraging and the consumption of bioactive substances. In honeybees ( Apis mellifera ), infection with the common gut parasite Nosema ceranae causes metabolic disruption and increased mortality. Ethanol is a naturally occurring bioactive compound found in nectar, and honeybees exhibit high to...

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) are indispensable pollinators for ecosystem stability and agricultural productivity. However, they face numerous challenges, including pathogens threatening their survival and ecosystem services. Among these pathogens, Nosema ceranae, a microsporidian parasite, causes significant damage to the intestinal tract and induces...

In this study, we examine the distribution of cryptobiotic abilities, specifically anhydrobiosis and cryobiosis, in tardigrade communities across a habitat gradient from the edge to the centre of a forest bordering a desert. Our study demonstrates no correlation between desiccation and freezing tolerance at the community level. However, communities...

Rescue behavior aims to free a relative from danger. Ants are particularly known for such helpfulness and, perhaps not coincidentally, also show the highest level of social organization in the animal kingdom, i.e., eusociality. However, even among social species such as ants, there is a huge variation in rescue proneness and little is understood ab...

Honeybees ( Apis mellifera ) are indispensable pollinators, essential for ecosystem stability and agricultural productivity. However, they face numerous challenges, including pathogens that threaten their survival and ecosystem services. Among these pathogens, Nosema ceranae , a microsporidian parasite, causes significant damage to the intestinal t...

Here, we present an analysis based on a 40-year dataset from a nest-box population of the collared flycatcher ( Ficedula albicollis ). Our objective is to examine the impact of weather conditions during the incubation and nestling period on key indicators of individual fitness, including offspring production and local annual recruitment rate. Our f...

Nosemosis, caused by microsporidian parasites of the genus Nosema, is considered a significant health concern for insect pollinators, including the economically important honeybee (Apis mellifera). Despite its acknowledged importance, the impact of this disease on honeybee survivorship remains unclear. Here, a standard laboratory cage trial was use...

Previous studies on various organisms have suggested that low doses of ethanol can have stimulatory effects, while higher doses may lead to toxicity, a response known as hormesis. Low ethanol concentrations occur naturally in the environment, particularly in fermenting fruits and flower nectar, where pollinators such as honey bees may encounter it....

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are one of the most crucial pollinators, providing vital ecosystem services. Their development and functioning depend on essential nutrients and substances found in the environment. While collecting nectar as a vital carbohydrate source, bees routinely encounter low doses of ethanol from yeast fermentation. Yet, the effe...

Nosemosis, caused by microsporidian parasites of the genus Nosema , is considered a significant health concern for insect pollinators, including the most economically significant, the honeybee ( Apis mellifera L.). Despite its acknowledged importance, the impact of this disease on honeybee survivorship remains unclear. In this study, we used a stan...

The common sand-dwelling Formica cinerea ants possess monomorphic workers, yet with considerable and easily identified size variation. Considering the importance of body size in polymorphic ants and other animals, we test whether size-dependent differences in behaviour occur in this species. We focus on the behaviour of large and small foragers in...

The Formica cinerea ants are known to be highly territorial and aggressively defend their nest and foraging areas against other ants. During the foraging, workers engage in large-scale battles with other colonies of ants and injuries often occur in the process. Such injuries open the body up to pathologies and can lead to costs expressed in lower s...

Antlions and wormlions are distantly related insect taxa, both digging pits in loose soil and ambushing arthropod prey. Their hunting method, which is rare in the animal kingdom, is a clear example of convergent evolution. There is little research directly comparing the two pit-building taxa. Using the same experimental platform to investigate how...

Some workers of the honeybee show high alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) levels and high resistance to the sedative effects of alcohol, yet it is unknown whether these two issues are directly related. Here we looked for a link between ADH levels and sedation latency in response to alcohol exposure. We used molecular and immunoblotting methods to investig...

Animals require a set of abiotic conditions to survive and reproduce. When one of these requirements is not met, the animal's performance is impaired. The most often studied abiotic factor is temperature but less is known on other such factors. We examined, here, the effect of wind on the hunting performance of pit-building predators, insect larvae...

Despite growing knowledge and increasingly advanced methods of treatment, alcoholism still poses a serious, global problem that requires further extensive research. Considering that human research has limitations and raises many ethical issues, animal models are widely used in this type of research. The honeybee Apis mellifera has re-cently emerged...

Antlions and wormlions are unrelated insect taxa, but both construct pit traps in loose soil and hunt similar prey. Owing to the likeness of their hunting strategies, and since no other animals construct similar traps, they demonstrate an intriguing case study of convergent evolution. We reviewed the literature of the last 16 years and compared the...

We investigated the effects of heat stress on the responsiveness to vibrational cues, our measure of perceptual ability, in Myrmeleon bore antlion larvae (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae). We reared these trap-building predatory larvae under two heat stress regimes (mild, 30 °C, and harsh, 36 °C), and after they progressed from one instar stage to anoth...

Rescue behaviour is observed when one individual provides help to another individual in danger. Most reports of rescue behaviour concern ants (Formicidae), in which workers rescue each other from various types of entrapment. Many of these entrapment situations can be simulated in the laboratory using an entrapment bioassay, in which ants confront a...

Some sit-and-wait predators, such as antlion larvae, construct traps to capture passing prey. The location of these traps depends on many abiotic and biotic factors, including temperature and the presence of conspecifics, which probably stimulate behaviours that minimize the costs and maximize the benefits of trap building. Here, we exposed second...

Among the honeybee workers, extranidal foragers are more rhythmic in their diel activity and more likely to encounter alcohol than intranidal nurses. Foragers are more active and potentially exposed to alcohol during the day, while nurses work around the clock and probably never encounter alcohol. Here, we took advantage of these differences and ch...

Various animal models are used in the study of alcoholism, with the honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) among them. Here, we tested the hypothesis that foragers show higher intoxication resistance to alcohol than nurses, an issue thus far not investigated. To this end, we measured the latency to full sedation when exposed to alcohol in foragers, nurses an...

Research on the behavioral responses of animals to extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, is lacking even though their frequency and intensity in nature are increasing. Here, we investigated the behavioral response to a simulated heatwave in two species of antlions (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae). These insects spend the majority of their lives as...

The interaction of antlions and ants is postulated to be a predator-prey interaction in which the involved parties coevolve. Here, we investigated two issues of potential significance in terms of antlions and ants imposing selective pressures on one another. First, we determined whether trap-building antlions and sand-dwelling ants closely co-occur...

Some terrestrial leeches mate by entwining the anterior ends of their bodies and then copulating. Here, we report first observations of a similar behavioral pattern in Haemadipsa picta terrestrial leeches from Malaysian Borneo. However, because the observed pattern can be easily induced artificially with no clear evidence of copulation, we suggest...

The honeybee is one of several eusocial species with a complex set of anatomical, physiological, and behavioural traits that are correlated with foraging preferences. Sensory sensitivity to sucrose is associated with the foraging preferences of workers, with individuals that are less sensitive to sugar preferring to forage for nectar and those that...

The rain forests of South-East Asia represent a biodiversity hotspot of terrestrial leeches, but we have only fragmentary and often anecdotal information on this component of tropical communities. To address the foraging tactics of terrestrial leeches, we studied the vertical distribution of Haemadipsa picta on foliage in a Bornean tropical rain fo...

1. Larvae of antlions (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae) and wormlions (Diptera: Vermileonidae) display a convergently evolved sit‐and‐wait hunting strategy of building pitfall traps in sandy areas. This study investigated a sympatric population of antlions and wormlions in the lowland rainforest of Borneo for substrate moisture, particle size and temper...

Worker honeybees may reproduce in either their own or foreign colonies; the latter situation is termed intraspecific reproductive parasitism (IRP). In this study, we compared the tendency for IRP between normal honeybee workers, which are characterized by a relatively low reproductive potential, and “rebel workers”, a recently discovered subcaste o...

In eusocial insect colonies, workers have individual preferences for performing particular tasks. Previous research suggests that these preferences might be associated with worker reproductive potential; however, diferent studies have yielded inconsistent results. This study constitutes the frst comparison of foraging preferences between geneticall...

The honeybee is being developed as a simple invertebrate model for alcohol-related studies. To date, several effects of ethanol consumption have been demonstrated in honeybees, but the tolerance effect, one of the hallmarks of alcohol overuse, has never been shown. Here, we confirm our hypothesis that the response to ethanol (in terms of motor impa...

Recently, antlion larvae with greater behavioural asymmetry were shown to have improved learning abilities. However, a major evolutionary question that remained unanswered was why this asymmetry does not increase in all individuals during development. Here, we show that a trade-off exists between learning ability of larvae and their hunting efficie...

1. This study reports the discovery of sympatric populations of antlions (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae) and wormlions (Diptera: Vermileonidae) in a unique system of sandy microhabitats in the lowland rainforest of Borneo. The two species convergently evolved sit-and-wait predatory larvae, which construct pitfall traps to hunt insects. Despite similar...

Trap-building predators remain under strong selection from thermal microenvironments. To address how soil temperature and body size affect trap building, we conducted a laboratory experiment using larvae of the antlion Myrmeleon bore at six ecologically relevant temperatures. Larger larvae built larger traps, and warmer soil led to more and larger...

In social insects behavioral consequences of shortened life expectancy include, among others, increased risk proneness and social withdrawal. We investigated the impact of experimental shortening of life expectancy of foragers of the ant Formica cinerea achieved by their exposure to carbon dioxide on the expression of rescue behavior, risky pro-soc...

Social insects, especially honeybees, have received much attention in comparative gerontology because of their peculiar and flexible ageing patterns that differ across genetically similar individuals. The longevity of honeybee individuals varies and depends on patterns of gene expression during development; females developing into reproductive indi...

Some ants display rescue behaviour, which is performed by nearby nestmates and directed at individuals in danger. Here, using several ant species, we demonstrate that rescue behaviour expression matches predicted occurrences based on certain aspects of species' ecological niches. Rescue occurred in sand-dwelling ants exposed both to co-occurring an...

There are several possible causes of aggregated nesting in solitary Aculeata, one being joint defense against parasites. We tested whether females prefer nesting in aggregations, even if they consist of heterospecifics. We compared the colonization and nesting parasitism of trap-nests with and without a red mason bee aggregation. The results did no...

Certain ants perform rescue behaviour for other ants that require help, and the expression of rescue behaviour is hypothesized to depend on signals (“calls for help”) sent by the imperilled individuals. We studied whether the mandibular glands were involved in the elicitation of rescue behaviour in Formica cinerea Mayr ants. In the first experiment...

Many species of palm produce chambers called domatia that are used by ants as nesting spaces. However, the ecological nature of this association is not well understood, and the information on palm-ant interactions is primarily anecdotal. Here, we conducted a field study in the secondary forest of the Danum Valley Conservation Area, Malaysian Borneo...

Learning abilities are exhibited by many animals, including insects. However, sedentary species are typically believed to have low capacities and requirements for learning. Despite this view, recent studies show that even such inconspicuous organisms as larval antlions, which employ an ambush predation strategy, are capable of learning, although th...

When an antlion captures a foraging ant, the victim’s nestmates may display rescue behaviour. This study tested the hypothesis that the expression of rescue behaviour depends on the life expectancy of the captured ant. This hypothesis predicts that the expression of rescue behaviour will be less frequent when the captured ant has a lower life expec...

Intralocus sexual conflict (IASC) arises when fitness optima for a shared trait differ between the sexes; such conflict may help maintain genetic variation within populations. Sex-limited expression of sexually antagonistic traits may help resolve the conflict, but the extent of this resolution remains a subject of debate. In species with alternati...