This week’s Animal Behavior Graduate Group seminar:
Dr. Edwin Lewis, Departments of Entomology and Nematology, UC Davis
Infection behaviors of parasitic nematodes: The story of the slithering herd
Friday, May 4th, 12:10 in 194 Young Hall
Coffee and cookies will be available
Dr. Lewis’ website: http://nematology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/lewis/
My research program is wide-ranging in the scope of the questions asked and in the taxa that are studied. There is, however, a common thread to the work that takes place in my laboratory; we seek to understand why and how organisms find, recognize, assess and exploit resources. We ask questions about how insects and nematodes make decisions about resource utilization and what the fitness outcomes of the decisions are. To answer these kinds of questions, we engage in studies of behavior, population ecology, community ecology and evolutionary biology with several groups of insects, nematodes and bacteria. There are also intentional links to more practical pursuits including biological control of crop pests, predicting the impact of crop management on pest and beneficial organisms and restoration ecology. I see no difference between what is traditionally called “basic” and “applied” research, thus the links of nearly all of the work in the laboratory to agricultural or environmental concerns is explicit.
Jonathan Eisen's Lab 