Group Leader
Ajay Narendra, Associate Professor
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
Marcel is studying the neural circuitry of the central complex in ants and bees.
Website
Luis Robledo-Ospina
Luis joins us from Mexico to study visual behaviour and visual systems of jumping spiders.
Website
Carmen Da Silva
Carmen is a Macquarie Research Fellow (MQRF) with a strong interest and expertise in native Australian bees. She studies adaptive capacity of Australian native bees to climate change using number of approaches. Carmen is hosted by Oliver Griffith and Ajay Narendra.
Website
PhD Candidates
Casey Forster
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
Giovanni joined us from Ecuador. He is investigating visual ecology of the Australian strobe ants of the genus Opisthopsis.
Saroja Ellendula
Saroja joined us in early 2023. She is identifying the neural circuitry involved in building visual spatial memories in ants.
Website
Martha Daniel
Martha is a co-tutelle PhD candidate with us and Martin How (Bristol). Martha studies polarisation sensitivity in mantid shrimps and ants.
Website
Anuja Joseph
After completing an MRes with us, Anuja started a PhD in late 2023. Anuja will study how native stingless bees detect obstacles and avoid collisions in free flight.
Website
Pranav Joshi
After completing his MRes with us, Pranav started a PhD with us in 2024 to investigate the biomechanics of jumping in Salticid spiders
MRes Candidates
Daniel Allman
Daniel is carrying out a comparative analyses on jumping choreography in Myrmecia ants.
Website
Masters Coursework Candidates
Abhaydeep Pinjala
Abhaydeep is a Masters student from the Conservation Biology program. He is investigating the differential investments in brain regions in native stingless bees.
Website
Recent Visitors
Dr Sam England; Dr Yuri Ogawa; Prof Dinesh Rao; Prof Diana Peerez-Staples; Prof Christian Peeters; A/Prof Marc Seid
Our Wonderful Collaborators
Prof Jochen Zeil, Australian National University, Canberra; A/Prof Jan Hemmi, University of Western Australia, Perth; A/Prof Richard Peters, La Trobe University, Bundoora; Prof Dinesh Rao, Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico; A/Prof Fleur Ponton, Macquarie University, Sydney; Prof Marie Herberstein, Macquarie University, Sydney; Dr Fiorella Ramirez-Esquivel, UNSW ADFA campus, Canberra; Prof Andrew Barron, 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
Pranav Joshi MRes 2023; Anuja Joseph, MRes 2023; Bhavana Penmetcha, PhD 2023; Marcel Sayre, PhD 2023; Vaishnavi Sathyakumar, MRes 2022; Zoltán Kósci, PhD 2022; Zachary Sheehan, Research Assistant 2020; Yuri Ogawa, Postdoctoral Fellow 2019; Bhavana Penmetcha MRes 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; Fiorella Ramirez-Esquivel, PhD 2018; Sara Wood Hons 2014, Chloé Raderschall, MPhil 2015; Fiorella Ramirez-Esquivel, Hons 2013; Samuel Reid, PhD 2011.
Ecological Neuroscience Group 