Group Leader
Ajay Narendra, Associate Professor, MRes Director
Ajay is interested in understanding how insects navigate in their natural habitats. He is also interested in the sensory structures and neural machinery they have evolved to memorise, integrate and recall information.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Marcel Sayre, Postdoctoral Researcher
Marcel is studying the neural circuitry of the central complex in ants and bees.
PhD Candidates
Bhavana Penmetcha, PhD Candidate
Bhavana completed her MRes with us and progressed to a PhD. She is studying the physiology of compound eyes and ocelli in bull ants and native stingless bees.
Website
Casey Forster, PhD Candidate
Casey is our bee wiz! She is studying the effect of pesticides on microbiota and learning and memory in honeybees and native stingless bees.
Website
Giovanni Ramon-Cabrera, PhD Candidate
Giovanni joined us from Ecuador. He is investigating visual ecology of the Australian strobe ants of the genus Opisthopsis.
Saroja Ellendula, PhD Candidate
Saroja joined us in early 2023. She will identify the neural circuitry involved in building visual spatial memories in ants.
Website
Martha Daniel, PhD Candidate
Martha is enrolled in a co-tutelle PhD with us and Martin How (Bristol). Martha studies polarisation sensitivity in mantid shrimps and ants.
Website
MRes Candidates
Anuja Joseph, MRes Y2 Candidate
Anuja joined our group to study the navigational strategies used by ants while walking home backwards.
Website:
Daniel Allman, MRes Y2 Candidate
Daniel will carry out a comparative analyses of jumping choreography in Myrmecia ants.
Website:
Pranav Joshi, MRes Y2 Candidate
Pranav joined us in 2023 to investigate the biomechanics of jumping in Salticid spiders
Recent Visitors
- Dr Yuri Ogawa, Flinders University, Adelaide
- Prof Dinesh Rao, Universidad Veracruzana
- Prof Diana Peerez-Staples, Universidad Veracruzana
- Prof Christian Peeters
- A/Prof Marc Seid
Collaborations
- A/Prof Jan Hemmi, University of Western Australia, Perth
- A/Prof Richard Peters, La Trobe University, Bundoora
- Prof Dinesh Rao, Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico
- Dr Fleur Ponton, Macquarie University, Sydney
- Dr Yuri Ogawa, Flinders University, Adelaide
- Prof Nathan Hart, Macquarie University, Sydney
- Prof Heloise Gibb, La Trobe University, Bundoora
- Prof Barbara Webb, University of Edinburgh
- Dr Stanley Heinze, Lund University
- Prof Marc Seid, University of Scranton, Pennsylvania
Alumni
Vaishnavi Sathyakumar, MRes 2022; Zachary Sheehan, Research Assistant 2020; Yuri Ogawa, Postdoctoral Fellow 2019; Frances J Kamhi, Postdoctoral Fellow 2019; Ravindra Palavalli-Nettimi, PhD 2019; Fiorella Ramirez-Esquivel, PhD 2018; Duncan Jaroslow, MRes 2018; Zachary Sheehan, MRes 2017; Alex Swaja, RA 2017.
Ecological Neuroscience Group 