Sixth doctor from the lab!

Sajesh Vijayan successfully defended his Ph.D. Thesis on the 14th of February 2024. His thesis was on understanding the behavioral and visual ecology of the Asian giant honeybee Apis dorsata. His work involved both behavioral and field-based studies of his study species. The defense lasted for more than an hour and was very engaging. He has successfully paved his way to the scientific field of honeybees! Congratulations Sajesh, may you mentor more bee enthusiasts.

      

 

Picture: Dr. Sajesh with Prof. Gadagkar and Prof. Hema and a Beehive (Left), The lab dinner for Dr. Sajesh’s defense (Right).

 

Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar gives a departmental seminar at IISER-TVM on 13th Feb 2024

Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar gave a talk on the “Division of Labour in the Indian Paper Wasp Ropalidia marginata”. He gave insights into how reproductive and non-reproductive division of labour are established in newly founded colonies and maintained in established colonies. He also spoke about the decentralised regulation of dominance behaviour and foraging regulation. Subsequently, he also spoke on how excess food reduces dominance behaviour and starvation increases dominance behaviour in the study species. He finally concluded by shedding light on how the process of science is as important as the product.

Picture: Prof. Gadagkar giving the talk

Pic courtesy: Sachin Bhaskar

Lab participation in FS-BIO 2024 at IISER-TVM

The BEE lab’s participation at the Frontier Symposium, 2nd-4th Feb 2024 at IISER TVM. Manish and Amal presented posters of their work. Sudeep gave a flash-talk.

  

Pictures: Manish (left pic) and Amal (right pic) presenting their work to the audience.

Picture Courtesy: Dr. Sajesh Vijayan

Prof. Weiss and Dr. Uma visit the lab

Prof. Martha R. Weiss from Georgetown University gave a talk on the 14th of Nov 2023, about resource pulses (a sudden increase of resources), where she spoke about the emergence of periodical cicadas and their ecology. She also shed some light on how their emergence affected the trophic cascade in the ecosystem.

Dr. Divya Uma from Azim Premji University spoke about the commensal spiders Philoponella feroka and their interactions on the webs of Indian social spiders on the 15th of Nov 2023. She talked about how the web area and maintenance affect the abundance of these commensals. She also gave insights into the interaction between these two species on prey-capturing approaches.

 

    

Left picture: Prof. Weiss presenting her work; Right picture: Dr. Uma delivering the talk.

Lab group photo(Read from top left, clockwise): Aakash, Sajesh, Prof. Hema, Prof. Weiss, Manish, Vishwathiga, Aparna, Kavya, Malavika, Sudeep, Nandhu, Dr. Divya, Sanath, Amal, Gifty and Azmi.

Pic courtesy: Aakash Kumar Pathak and Gifty Alin Jacob

 

BEE-Lab participation at ATBC2023

Amal, Kavya, Manish, Sachin, and Sudeep presented a part of their works during the poster presentation sessions. Sajesh and Dr. Baheerathan presented their work as an oral presentation at the ATBC 2023, held at Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India from 2nd-6th of July 2023.

Manish bags the ‘Gentry Award for the Best poster’ at the ATBC 2023.

Well presented all of you’ll!

Pic Courtesy: Dr. Baheerathan, Sachin Bhaskar and Sajesh Vijayan

Fifth doctor from the lab!

Asmi successfully defends her thesis on the 3rd of July 2023 titled ‘Visual ecology of Tetragonula iridipennis‘. Her work ranged from anatomical to behavioral to field-based observations related to her study species. The defense lasted for more than an hour. She has paved her way into the scientific world of stingless bees. We wish her all the very best in her future endeavors.