Gad Shaulsky
Developmental genetics in Dictyostelium
Social organisms must deal with cheaters – individuals that reap the benefits of sociality without paying the costs. In Dictyostelium, some cells sacrifice themselves to benefit other cells that may be genetically different, providing a fertile ground for cheating. Dr Shaulsky is collaborating with Dr. Strassmann and Dr. Queller to investigate the genes that regulate social interaction. They are using genetics to find and characterize genes that determine social decisions, find whether they are involved in rapid-evolution arms races, and test how cooperators resist cheating (Foster et al., 2004).
Adam Kuspa
Signal transduction, cell differentiation, and genomics of Dictyostelium discoideum
Dr. Kuspa is interested in those aspects of Dictyostelium biology that are common to all eukaryotic organisms, and that will be informative for defining both the function of individual genes and the organization of regulatory hierarchies that operate in development. The relative simplicity and genetic tractability of organisms such as Dictyostelium should prove to be advantageous for genomic analyses of multicellular development.
Michael Purugganan
Evolution of Social Amoeba
The Purugganan Laboratory is in the Department of Biology and Center for Genomics and Systems Biology at New York University. They are examining the molecular population genetics of Dictyostelium, the relationship of nucleotide variation to kin discrimination and fruiting body formation, and transcriptome changes upon development of interactive structures.
Yuriy Fofanov
Bioinformatics
The Fofanov Laboratory conducts research in the area of analysis of statistical properties of short subsequences (n-mers) in microbial genomes and their link to pathogen evolution and identification
Greg Hunt
Honey Bee Behavior and Genomics
The Hunt has constructed a number of linkage maps of the honey bee genome, including one with over 1000 DNA markers. The maps show the positions of both the markers and genes that influence behaviors. By detecting genes that vary in bee populations, they hope to identify those that natural selection is working on in the evolution of social behaviors.
Christina Grozinger
Honey Bee Behavioral Genomics
The Grozinger lab is studying the molecular bases of social behavior in honey bees and other social insects, including bumble bees, paper wasps, and fire ants. We focus on mechanistic and evolutionary bases of chemical communication, including queen-worker interactions and the effects of pathogens and parasites.
Rita Cervo
Mechanisms and Evolution of Social Parasitism in Wasps
Rita Cervio is leadind the subgroup of the Firenze Group for the Study of Social Wasps focusing on the behavioural ecology of social parasites in order to study the mechanisms which enable them to usurp and control host colonies. Nest usurpation (and various degrees of intra and interspecific parasitism) is studied in various species of Polistes wasps
Stefano Turillazzi
Research on Social Biology of Wasps
At present the main research activities of the group are concentrated on behavioural ecology and sociobiology of paper-wasps (Polistinae) and hover-wasps (Stenogastrinae) and on the study of social parasitism in the genus Polistes.
James Carpenter
Systematics of the Wasp Family Vespidae
The long-term goal is a phylogenetic classification, based on cladistic analysis, of the entire group worldwide to the level of genus.