A couple of years ago I worked with Agat Sharma and Julia van der Putten to try and use live moths in a theater piece. It was not an unparalleled success, but it did inspire a chapter in this new book on interspecies performance!
You can read the paper here: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/3/jeb245946/343001/Diet-influences-resource-allocation-in-chemical
And an ECR spotlight with Cris here: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/3/jeb247280/343007/ECR-Spotlight-Cristina-Ottocento
I was lucky enough to be invited to the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology at Vetmeduni Vienna to give a talk on The effect of urbanisation on warning colouration.
September was a busy month as Elise also defended her excellent thesis on the Evolution of Sexual signals in moths! Congratulations Dr Fruitet!
Last week Cristina became Dr Ottocento. It was a lovely defence with Prof Mike Speed as opponent. Congratulations Cris!
Nice article in NOS about our new smart nest box cameras (only in dutch). Read it here.
Back when I first moved to Jyvaskyla I started work on examining the geographic variation in the wood tiger moths chemical defences. Of course, like so many things in biology, this turned out to be much more complicated than I had originally thought! Still thanks to the hard work of Cristina and Anne, this study is finally published in JEB!
In December Chiara successfully defended her PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr De Pasqual!
Two weeks ago saw the annual Amsterdam Young Academy inauguration, where we welcomed our new members and also, sadly, said goodbye to the first cohort of AYA, who completed four years of membership.
It was a really fun event, plus the first prize giving of AYA’s new Recognition and Rewards Awards! You can read more about them on our website here.
This week the Amsterdam Young Academy had our general assembly, followed by a round table on Recognition and Rewards.
Insect Chemical and Evolutionary Ecology 