The rockefeller university

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SPEAKER

Daniel Kronauer, Ph.D.

Stanley S. and Sydney R. Shuman Professor
Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior
The Rockefeller University
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

HOST

Cori Bargmann, Ph.D.

Torsten N. Wiesel Professor
Vice President for Academic Affairs
Lulu and Anthony Wang Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior
The Rockefeller University

Dr. Daniel Kronauer, Ph.D., studies how complex social behaviors evolve and function, using ants as a model for the biology of societies. Dr. Kronauer’s fascination with ants began in the field: observing honeypot ants in the deserts of Arizona, and army ants in Venezuela and Kenya. He sought to move from field research to the lab, where ant behavior could be studied with far greater precision. His breakthrough came with the discovery of the clonal raider ant in Okinawa, Japan—a blind, queenless species that reproduces asexually, making it uniquely suitable for controlled studies.

At Rockefeller, Dr. Kronauer developed the world’s first genetically modified ants, leading to breakthrough discoveries about how ants communicate through pheromones and how ancient brain chemicals, like oxytocin (inotocin in ants), influence social roles. Because these same neuromodulators also shape human behavior, his work highlights deep evolutionary parallels with humans and suggests that the roots of social behavior are partly shared across distant species. Viewing colonies as brain-like networks, Dr. Kronauer also seeks to reverse-engineer or even design new collective behaviors, which would profoundly expand our understanding of how societies—whether ant colonies or human communities— emerge from the interactions of individuals.

Dr. Kronauer is the Stanley S. and Sydney R. Shuman Professor and head of the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior at Rockefeller University. He is also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Originally from Germany, Dr. Kronauer earned his Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen, where he continued his postdoctoral research before further studies at the University of Lausanne and Harvard University. He joined the Rockefeller faculty in 2011 and is a researcher in the university’s Price Family Center for the Social Brain. Dr. Kronauer is an award-winning wildlife photographer and the author of Army Ants: Nature’s Ultimate Social Hunters, published in 2020.