Honeybee Behaviour and Neuroscience

Vacancy Reference Number

https://imprs-qbee.mpg.de/86943/honeybee-behavior-and-neuroscience

Closing Date

24 Nov 2024

Salary

Salary according to the pay-scale for University employees (TVL)

Address

Konstanz / Radolfzell

Duration

3 years

Research Project in the Galizia Lab, University of Konstanz http://neuro.uni-konstanz.de

Insects play crucial roles in pollination of the world’s crops. Yet insect populations are on decline, partially due to pesticide-intensive agriculture and diseases. While insects have no adaptive immune system, eusocial insects like honeybees, exert social immunity as part of maintaining hive hygiene. Most likely, bees detect sick bees in the hive using olfaction, and then clean up! Here, we are seeking to understand how olfaction drives social immunity in response to hive infestation. In this project, you will study honeybee behavior as response to disease odorants, and the coding of these odorants in the honeybee brain

The key techniques used are in-vivo brain imaging (calcium imaging), learning and memory behavioral experiments, and computational data analysis.

The project is part of a collaborations with research groups in Denmark and in the USA, in which we join expertise in entomology, synthetic biology, and chemistry to test the working hypothesis that the evolution of social immunity in honeybees is controlled by olfaction.

Applicants should apply via the IMPRS application system

Further Information

Person criteria:
You should be interested and/or have a background in animal behavior, olfactory coding, neuroscience, optical imaging, computational neuroscience, insect studies – not all of these, or course: the missing ones you will be trained on. Strong written and oral communication skills in English are necessary.

Contact Details

For more information, contact giovanni.galizia@uni-konstanz.de or valerie.kuklovsky@uni-konstanz.de.