CBER seminar - Idris Adams & Cintia Akemi Oi 

CBER Internal Seminar 

Date: 19 May 2025

Speaker: Idris Adams & Cintia Akemi Oi 

Room: G O Schild LT, Medical Sciences

Time: 1-2pm 

For those at UCL East, there will be a live screening of the seminar in 1 Pool Street, People and Nature Lab, Room 219B. 
You can also join us remotely via the Teams link below.

Idris Adams 

Title: Evolution of prey type and life history traits in solitary wasps. 

Abstract: Ecological specificity describes the extent to which an organism is adapted to only a subset of all possible environments or resources. Trophic specialists, organisms with narrow dietary breadths, are typically theorised to evolve from generalist ancestors. Wasps provide many opportunities for addressing major questions in ecology and evolution, in part due to their significant species richness. Solitary wasps in the families Crabronidae and Sphecidae exhibit considerable diversity in prey type and associated life history traits, including nesting habitat, nest structure, and mode of prey carriage. However, empirical research on these families is lacking in comparison to non-aculeate parasitoid wasps. This talk will address work currently being undertaken to measure levels of trophic specificity across these two families, in addition to determining the ancestral state of many of the aforementioned traits. Results provide insights into how generalists and specialists evolve, and contribute to our understanding of the extreme diversity seen in the order Hymenoptera.

Bio: I’m starting my second year as a London NERC DTP PhD student in the Sumner Lab, looking at the evolution of behaviour and life history traits in aculeate wasps. Currently I am focusing on the Crabronidae, a species-rich family of over 10,000 species showing significant variation in prey types and life histories, such as provisioning strategies, nest construction behaviours, and habitat choice. Methods I’m currently using include network analysis and phylogenetic comparative analyses, with a look to incorporating fieldwork alongside these in the remainder of my PhD. 

Cintia Akemi Oi

Title: More than mean girls: what’s left to know about wasps

Abstract: Understanding the evolution of eusociality requires both field observation and big-picture thinking. In this seminar, I reflect on how my field expeditions and challenges working with stinging insects have shaped the questions I ask about behaviour in wasps. From solitary species, tropical paper wasps colonies to the imposing social structures of hornets, I explore how natural history, behaviour, and evolution intersect in the field. By combining morphology, chemical ecology, behavioural ecology and tools in molecular biology, I aim to study how complex wasps are and what they can teach us about the evolution of eusociality.

Bio: I am a currently a NERC postdoctoral researcher at UCL & scientific associated at Natural History Museum (NHM-London) looking at sensory systems across wasps. I have held previous positions as a Marie-Curie Fellow at UCL studying sand-wasp behaviour through gene expression and as a postdoctoral researcher (funded by FWO) at KU Leuven looking at queen pheromone evolution across social wasps, which was a follow-up of my PhD.

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