Insect Chemical and Evolutionary Ecology

Smart nest box cameras in the news!

Nice artlice in NOS about our new smart nest box camers (only in dutch). Read it here.

Not just the sum of its parts – paper now out!

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!

Chiara defends!

In December Chiara successfully defended her PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr De Pasqual!

AYA inauguration

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.

AYA Roundtable

This week the Amsterdam Young Academy had our general assembly, followed by a round table on Recognition and Rewards.

Amsterdam 27-6-22 Jaarvergadering Aya in de Verbroederij in Amsterdam Noord. Copyright: Sander Nieuwenhuys

Teaching Qualification Celebration

On Tuesday I received the physical copy of my University Teaching Qualification (BKO). I’ve had the digital copy for a while but it was nice that we could all finally celebrate!

Spring is in the air

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to give a Plenary at the ASAB easter meeting. It was great fun to talk about colourful moths and our new work looking at the impact of urbanisation on predator-prey signalling.

Fabulous plenary talk by @MothProf at @asab_conference @asab_tweets 🤓 #AcademicOffspring pic.twitter.com/zmj0wPqm5U

— David Shuker 💙 (@DavidMShuker) April 8, 2022

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The final plenary of @asab_conference Easter 2022 from @MothProf discussing aposematism 🦋 pic.twitter.com/hyMwHXxCVl

— Dr Helen Gray (@Helen_Gray_) April 8, 2022

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The birds are also now in full breeding mode, with lots of eggs. Stay tuned for the inevitable chick pics!

New Nest Boxes

In collaboration with Wouter Halfwerk and Barbara Tomotani we put up another 50 nest boxes around Amsterdam this friday. Bringing our total up to 80 boxes!

We will use these to study the effects of urbanisation on great tit and blue tit behaviour and breeding. Let’s hope the birds like them!

NVG meeting 2021

Just before the latest lock down the Netherlands Society for Behavioural Biology managed to sneak in it’s annual meeting. I was happy to represent insects with my keynote talk on Chemicals and colours: uncovering the chemical signals maintaining a colour polymorphism, and to get a lovely walk on the beach!