Research Interests
In my PhD project I am studying circadian rhythms in bumblebees. Circadian rhythms (like our sleep/wake cycles) enable organisms to anticipate and to prepare for predictable changes in their environment.
In social insects like bumblebees, the colony as a
super-organism has a foraging rhythm aligned to the
patterns of resource availability. Within this colony
rhythm, the activity patterns of individuals are embedded.
I‘m interested in how division of labour in bumblebee
colonies changes temporarily under different light
conditions, especially under continuous daylight.
To be able to monitor the foraging activity of individual
bumblebees over their whole life-span I‘m using the radio
frequency identification technology
(RFID). Thereby the foragers are tagged
individually with small RFID transponders (see picture
above). The foraging activity of tagged bees can henceforth
be recorded automatically by RFID readers, which are placed
at the nest entrance.
An article about the use of RFID in our lab at Queen Mary, University of London -
including a short video - can be found at the BBC.