Eric Lucas

Social insects provide a unique model for the study of aging and senescence due to the great disparity in lifespan between queens and workers, which do not differ genetically. Workers are, in many species, further divided into castes that are exposed to a variety of environmental factors, which models predict should lead to varying patterns of senescence. My work focuses on examining the lifespan differences that exist between castes in ants. In particular, I am interested in how differences in gene expression and physiology between castes can be explained by evolutionary models of senescence. Initially, I am working on establishing cell lines from different ant castes in order to study cellular behaviour relevant to senescence in the absence of the environmental differences that cannot be removed even from laboratory-reared colonies. I also aim to investigate differences in investment into resistance against mortality factors such as disease and oxidative damage.

My general interests extend to understanding how evolution shapes behaviour in a range of contexts, in particular the evolution of sociality and of behaviours that emerge in species with cooperative brood care and reproductive division of labour. My previous work has focused on studying social and genetic structure in the apoid wasp Microstigmus nigrophthalmus, whose lineage represents an origin of sociality independent from other Hymenoptera.

2011 - present
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Laurent Keller group. Université de Lausanne. Département d'Ecologie et d'Evolution, CH 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland.

2009
Research Assistant
Jeremy Field group. University of Sussex. School of Life Sciences, Brighton, BN1 9QG, UK.

2005 - 2009
PhD
Jeremy Field group. University of Sussex. School of Life Sciences, Brighton, BN1 9QG, UK.
Thesis: "Social Structure and Evolution of the Apoid Wasp Microstigmus nigrophthalmus"

2000 - 2003
BA (Hons) Zoology. University of Cambridge. Department of Zoology, Cambridge, CB2 3EJ, UK.