Dr. Sangeetha Varma joins the lab as a post-doctoral fellow under the Chief Minister’s NavaKerala Postdoctoral fellowship programe. All the very best to you!
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.
Asmi bags the second prize for poster at FS-BIO 2023
Asmi Jeezera is the runner-up for the poster prize at FS-BIO_2023 held at IISER-TVM.
Invited speakers visit the lab!
Vivek Nithyananda from Newcastle University, England had given a talk on 18th Jan 2023. He explained how stress-induced states affect cognitive decision-making in the bumblebees. He also spoke about emotion-like states called affective states in the bumblebees.
Yuval Sapir from Tel-Aviv University, Israel spoke about the evolution of flower color variation on the 19th Jan 2023. He spoke about the flower color dimorphism in Linum pubescens through the differential behaviour of its major pollinator, thereby showing us an example of balancing selection in flowers. He also spoke about the pleiotropic effect on color variation as an adaptation towards climatic factors in Anemone flowers. Lastly, he also shed some light about the continuous flower color variation in the Royal Irises.
Photo courtesy: Sudeep R
People inset (Left to Right): Kavya Mohan, Sudeep R, Amal K Vyas, Dr. Yuval Sapir, Prof. Hema Somanathan, Sajesh Vijayan, Dr. Vivek Nithyananda, Manish Ravi, Siva Subramaniam, Asmi Jezeera, Arya Devi, Sachin Bhaskar, Dr. Baheerathan Murugavel, Aparna Pradeep, Kaustubh Verma
Fourth doctor from the lab!
Baheerathan successfully defends his thesis on the 16th of Dec 2022, titled ‘Visual ecology of pteropodid bats of southern India’. The defense lasted for more than an hour and it was very engaging. He has made his way to the scientific world of bats! Congratulations Bahee, we will remember your passion for bats and may you mentor more bat enthusiasts.
Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship for Manish!
Manish has been awarded the prestigious PMRF for his Ph.D. We are extremely proud of this. All the very best for your endeavours.
Balu joins Newcastle as a research associate.
Balu joined the lab in 2011 as a Ph.D, completes three postdocs since, and leaves for Newcastle as a research associate. We wish him all the very best.
Travel awards for Sajesh!
Sajesh has been awarded the ESEB (European Society for Evolutionary Biology) Travel Award to attend ESEB 2022 in Prague and a Developing Neuroethology Award from the International Society for Neuroethology to attend ICN 2022 in Lisbon. Apart from these, he is also attending ICE 2022 in Helsinki.
We wish him happy traveling!
Kavya gets a research grant from ABS
Kavya Mohan has received the student research grant from the Animal Behaviour Society for her research on the foraging ranges of tropical bees.