José Eric Romero González

Rm: 2.26 Fogg Building

Email: j.e.romerogonzalez@qmul.ac.uk 

Research interests

Animals live in continuously changing environments, where acquiring information on mates, predators, foraging, and nesting sites, entails major consequences on individual fitness. Animals can obtain such information by individual exploration, i.e. using a trial-and-error strategy. Alternatively, the costs and risks of individual exploration may be surpassed by relying on information previously sampled by others, either conspecifics or heterospecifics. Social information use is a widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom. For example, social insects, such as bees, live in unique social environments where they continuously have to gather information on the changeable nectar and pollen offerings of different plant species; thus, offering manageable model systems to study the use of social information. The broad aim of my research project is to understand the natural relevance of social information use in complex information networks as might exist in a natural meadow with multiple flower and pollinator species. This question will be addressed by means of simulating realistic field conditions, i.e. using live demonstrators and different types of flowers to explore the value of information delivered by different species of pollinators to a bee observer seeking nectar. Therefore, results obtained from this project are expected to be readily extrapolated to natural settings.  

 

Educational background

2015-Present. PhD student, Queen Mary, University of London, UK (supervisor: Prof. L. Chittka)

2012 – 2014. Msc - Animal Health and Husbandry. National Autonomus University of Mexico, Mexico.

2004-2009. Licentiate in Veterinary Medicine and Animal Husbandry. National Autonomus University of Mexico, Mexico.