The Sumner Lab

Insect Research Group, University College London

  • Our Group
    • The Sumner Lab
    • Seirian Sumner
    • Christopher Wyatt
    • Cintia Akemi Oi
    • Lewis Revely
    • Owen Corbett
    • Romuald Tcheutchoua
    • Iona Cunningham-Eurich
    • Hayley McMechan
    • Left The Nest
      • Emeline Favreau
      • Alessandro Cini
      • Benjamin Taylor
      • Robin Southon
      • Adam Devenish
      • Sandra Moreno
      • Daisy Taylor
      • Emily Bell
      • Sam Duckerin
      • Patrick Kennedy
  • Our Research
    • Themes
      • Evolution
      • Genomics and Bioinformatics
      • Mechanisms
      • Ecology
    • Lab Publications
    • Student Projects
  • News and Updates
  • New Book: Endless Forms
    • What People Say
    • Reviews
    • Media
    • Appearances
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  • Contact
  • Eco-Flow – A bioinformatics ecosystem for agri-ecology

    We are excited to announce the start of our BBSRC- “Bioinformatics and Biological Resources Fund” grant to help build next generation agri-ecology workflows and their respective communities.

    News and Updates, Research
    22 November 2023
  • Citizen science for the win: how we used wasps collected by people in their back gardens for a genetic study

    We used samples from the Big Wasp Survey to analyse the population genetic structure of the Common Yellowjacket, Vespula vulgaris across the UK. You can read the paper here (Open Access).

    News and Updates, Research
    14 September 2023
  • Wasp Collecting in the Amazon – Brazil January 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).

    News and Updates, Research
    18 April 2023
  • New paper highlighted in Genome Biology and Evolution

    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.

    News and Updates, Research
    26 January 2023
  • What roles do wasps play in nature?

    Social insects perform vital ecosystem services; for example, bees are important pollinators, ants disperse seeds and termites toil the soil. The role of wasps in ecosystems is less well understood, and this is one of the reasons why people generally dislike wasps. We lack estimates of the ecological and economic value of wasps to ecosystems […]

    Research
    24 May 2022
  • Losses in behavioural plasticity and the evolution of altruism

    A trade-mark of sociality is the evolution of specialist task-performers, who show life-time commitment to a specific role. Social insects are great study organisms for understanding how and why this happens. The prime example is the highly eusocial species, the honeybee, where each individual larvae retains the ability to develop as a queen or a worker […]

    Research
    24 May 2022
  • How do identical genomes produce phenotypic and behavioural diversity?

    Social insects (bees, wasps, ants and termites) are great models for addressing this: a single genome can give rise to remarkably different phenotypes, in the form of queen and worker castes.  Such differences are underlain by differential expression of shared genes. We are exploring the molecular basis of social castes in a range of eusocial […]

    Research
    24 May 2022

RECENT Publications

Cunningham-Eurich, I., Kontou, D., Yordanova, M., Maeda-Obregon, A., Favreau, E., Wang, J. et al. 2023. Using citizen science data to assess the population genetic structure of the common yellowjacket wasp, Vespula vulgaris. Insect Molecular Biology, 1–14 Favreau E, Cini A, Taylor D. et al. 2023. Putting hornets on the genomic map. Sci Rep 13, 6232 Sumner S, Favreau E, Geist K, Toth A L, Rehan S M. 2023. Molecular […]

Full publication list here

rECENT POSTS

  • Eco-Flow – A bioinformatics ecosystem for agri-ecology

    22 November 2023
  • Citizen science for the win: how we used wasps collected by people in their back gardens for a genetic study

    14 September 2023
  • Kendra Edwards: Global Social Wasp Distributions

    14 July 2023

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