Insect Research Group, University College London
Professor Fabio Nascimento visited the Summer lab in July 2023 as part of the Nerc-Fapesp Seed Corn project (NE/W004437/1) “Secrets to a Successful Hunt: Integrating Genomes, Chemistry, and Behaviour in Neotropical Solitary Wasps”.
In order to foster new relationships between wasp researchers, the NHM and its collections, we organised the first ever (with hopefully more to come) “Wasp Day” in May 2023.
In January of 2023, Prof Seirian Sumner and post-doc Dr Cintia Oi travelled to Brazil to carry out work as part of their project Secrets to a Successful Hunt: Integrating Genomes, Chemistry and Behaviour in Neotropical Solitary Wasps (read full details of this collaborative international NERC-funded project here).
Postdoc Émeline Favreau on her experience attending the Nextflow Summit and Hackathon in October 2022.
A new paper, first author Emeline Favreau, has been highlighted in the January edition of journal Genome Biology and Evolution. Congratulations to Emeline, Chris Wyatt and Katie Geist on their momentous study on the molecular basis of sociality across bees and wasps. Read the highlight here, or find the paper itself here.
We were delighted to host a group meeting with Sjoert on November 2022.
We went to sample some Vespa crabro workers at the end of the summer. MSci student Iona had previously located the active nest within a public park.
Ed: We were delighted to host A-level student Elo Wilkinson-Rowe in our lab for two weeks in the summer of 2018. She threw herself into being a research scientist with great gusto, and seems to have enjoyed herself. Read her Blog below. If you are interested in the In2Science scheme (as a student or a…
This summer I was fortunate enough to be able to join the Sumner lab for a field season out in Trinidad. My role was as a research assistant as part of a four-person team working on two projects looking at species of tropical social wasps. This first was examining
‘Why fly half way across the world to Trinidad when there are plenty of wasps drowning in my lemonade in Peckham?’ was a fairly reasonable question I was asked by a friend. Trinidad may not initially seem a prime location for conducting field work, yet it is one of the regions with the greatest diversity…