Invited Seminar at CES on 12 December 2024 at 3:00 pm titled "Evolution of insect societies: perspectives from behavior, genomics, and neuroscience" by Dr. Anindita Bramha from IIsc, Bangalore
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Topic:
Evolution of insect societies: perspectives from behavior, genomics, and neuroscience
Speaker:
Dr. Anindita Bramha, IIsc, Bangalore
Date & Time:
12 Dec 2024 - 3:00pm
Event Type:
Invited Seminar
Venue:
CES Seminar Hall, 3rd Floor, Biological Sciences Building
Coffee/Tea:
Before the talk
Abstract:
Social insects like ants, bees and wasps are well-studied for their efficient colony organization through division of labor, and their complex mode of communication, primarily mediated through chemical cues. Although the first social insect genome was sequenced nearly 20 years ago, it is only in recent years that neurogenetic tools have been developed to study the molecular and neural pathways underlying social behavior. I will use two social insect species- a tropical paper wasp and an army ant - to illustrate how the integration of behavior, genomics, and neuroscience can provide a holistic understanding of behavioral phenotypes and uncover novel mechanisms driving social behavior.
Speaker Bio:
I am a Postdoctoral Associate at the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior at The Rockefeller University in New York. I am also a Transition to Independence Fellow of the Simons Collaboration on Plasticity and Aging Brains. I completed my PhD from the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, where I studied the behavioral dynamics of nest foundation in the Indian tropical paper wasp. Following this, I joined the Queen Mary University of London as a Marie Curie fellow, focusing on the genomics of viral load changes in response to changing social conditions in the red imported fire ant. Currently, at Rockefeller University, my research explores the neural and genomic mechanisms underlying olfactory system development and aging in the clonal raider ant.