Today I join the labgroup of Quinn McFrederick at the University of California, Riverside. The McFrederick lab studies interactions amongst the microbiota of wild and solitary bees, with the goal of determining how these interactions affect host phenotype. This research dovetails with my background on bumblebee parasites and their effect on the bumblebee. We will spend the next 2 years bringing these research themes together as we study wild bees in California.
Monthly Archives: March 2015
Goodbye to Bristol and Goodbye to England!
I’ve had a great time being part of the Sumner lab at the University of Bristol but as my contract comes to an end, I have accepted a position at the University of California to work with Quinn McFrederick looking at symbionts in wild bees.
Bristol has provided me with a wealth of experience looking at next generation sequence data and getting to grips with some of the latest bioinformatics programs. In addition, I’ve met and learnt from some amazing scientists at Bristol.
This list should give an idea of the diversity of experiences I’ve had in my year at Bristol:
David Attenborough, Salmon, Grillstock, QIIME, white bear, EMBL, longevity, Dairy cow onesies, new buildings, Pints of science, bird nests, SNPs, invasive ants, Proactis, Halle, CT rooms, cryinformatics, bumblebees, Liverpool, Playground outreach, Coffee, wasps, fire-drills, Super-B, HotSHOTs, Festival of Nature, Stacks, parasites, Tuxedo, TGAC, Didcot and the NERC Awards.
Back left to right: Peter Graystock, Patrick Kennedy, Robin Southon, Emily Bell, Daisy Taylor, Sam Duckerin, Adam Devenish. Front left to right: Seirian Sumner, Aoife Glass
Super-B: Methods for Pathogen Detection in non-Apis pollinators
SUPER-B brings together scientific and societal communities involved in the conservation and sustainable management of ecosystem services mediated by pollinators. This week we addressed the growing issue of non standardised disease screening in wild pollinators. In attendance were over 20 researchers of bee disease and we spent the week going over screening methods and technologies to try to increase conformity amongst researchers across Europe.
Its been an interesting week and meeting colleagues new and old has been a lot of fun!
Keeping bumblebee parasites at bay
In preparation to the NERC awards, the NERC organised for a short video on my research to be produced. This video is now available to view