Many Social insects are capable of exploiting food sources through communicating their location and quality to nest-mates. The honey bee, Apis mellifera, uses the waggle dance to recruit and precisely direct nest-mates to profitable resources. Recent studies have suggested that in certain environments the waggle dance is more costly than beneficial to a colony. My research centres on what circumstances favour different information-use and recruitment strategies.
Using honey bees, stingless bees and ants as model organisms we are able to look at how the recruitment strategy of a species affects its relationship with the environment and its fitness within different environments.
2011-2012:
MRes Ecology and Evolution, Imperial College London
2006-2009:
BSc Zoology, University of Manchester
