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.
PhD Candidates
Marcel Sayre, PhD Candidate
Marcel is studying the neural circuitry of the central complex in ants and bees.
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 keen on studying the visual ecology of the strobe ants, Opisthopsis ants.
Website
Saroja Ellendula, PhD Candidate
Saroja will join us in early 2023. Saroja completed her Masters studying dung beetles at Lund, Sweden. She will investigate spatial memories of ants.
Website
Martha Daniel, PhD Candidate
Martha will join us in 2023 to investigate polarisation sensitivity in ants and mantid shrimps.
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 Candidate
Daniel will carry out a comparative analyses of jumping choreography in Myrmecia ants.
Website:
Pranav Joshi, MRes Y2 Candidate
Pranav will join us in 2023 to investigate the biomechanics of jumping in Salticid spiders
Website
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 