Insect Research Group, University College London
Wasps matter – in your backyard, your farm, your local wild space Everyone appreciates the ‘good things’ bees, ants, hoverflies and even butterflies do for ecosystems on this planet. But for taxa that we don’t know much about, they can go unnoticed or worse – hated. Wasps are one such unloved organism, mainly because of their sting.…
Check out their webpages to find out what they are doing! PhD student Sandra Moreno; Masters by Research students Ryan Brock and Sam Morris; Volunteer Thomas Courty
Queen or worker? Flexibility between roles relies on just a few genes Two insect species from Latin America, the dinosaur ant and the red paper wasp, have been used to uncover the molecular mechanisms underpinning queen and worker roles in social insects. The research by an international team of scientists brings us closer to understanding…
Seirian is keeping busy with a series of seminars in UK universities in the next few weeks, where she is talking about the molecular basis of sociality. Find her at UCL, Swansea, Bath and Exeter.
We don’t only do social insect research. Seirian and collaborator Dr Nathalie Pettorelli at ZSL, London Zoo run a women in science public engagement initiative, Soapbox Science. We are currently recruiting a part-time events and media coordinator to help run Soapbox Science. More information here. Deadline is 20th November 2014.
Today our new, £60 million Life science building was officially opened by Sir David Attenborough, as reported here by ITV West. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfRvME–7Lg
We at the Sumner Group encounter this question a lot. Wasps are just useless, painful, and inexplicably determined to ruin your picnic, right? Actually, no! It turns out that wasps are surprisingly important in more ways than you might guess, and we’ve assembled a handy catalogue of reasons why. So next time we’re asked the…
This summer both Seirian and Emily attended the International Union for the Study of Social Insects international conference in Cairns, Australia. The event was hosted in the Cairns Conference Centre next to the Great Barrier Reef and really was a stunning location. Social insect researchers from all over the globe gathered to present and discuss…