Adventures in Academia – Insect Chemical and Evolutionary Ecology

Bioblitz at Artis Zoo

In April we had a busy day doing bird surveys and putting up nestbox cameras in Artis Zoo. You can read all about it here.

A great tit checks out a new nestbox camera in Artis Zoo.

Emiel van Loon explains how to set up AudioMoths to record birdsong.

New paper out in Science

Our paper is now out in Science, and we made the cover!

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr7368

I was lucky enough to be part of this global team that looked at how predator community, prey community, and visual environment influenced the predation risk of cryptic and warningly-coloured model moths.

We found that aposematic strategies fare better in environments with low predation intensity, whereas camouflage strategies are advantaged when other camouflaged prey species are rare and when light levels are low.

This is the sort of research this is impossible without strong global networks of collaboration. Team science at its best!

Interspecies performance book out now!

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!

https://www.atd.ahk.nl/en/news-and-events/news/2024/06/interspecies-performance-edited-by-atd-lector-laura-cull-o-maoilearca-and-florence-fitzgerald-allsopp/

Another paper out from Cristina’s thesis

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

Talking in Vienna about urban aposematism

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.

Elise defends!

September was a busy month as Elise also defended her excellent thesis on the Evolution of Sexual signals in moths! Congratulations Dr Fruitet!

Cristina defends!

Last week Cristina became Dr Ottocento. It was a lovely defence with Prof Mike Speed as opponent. Congratulations Cris!

Smart nest box cameras in the news!

Nice article in NOS about our new smart nest box cameras (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!