Current Projects

What are the ecological conditions that favor social strategies?

Understanding how and why animals form social groups is a fundamental aim of sociobiology. Socially polymorphic animals, including many ants and bees, offer unique opportunities to study social and solitary strategies in sympatry. I use behavioral and physiological techniques in tandem with image data to investigate the ecological factors underlying social strategy decisions.

Read more in:
Ostwald et al. 2020. Ins Soc.
Ostwald et al. 2021. Proc B.
Ostwald et al. 2021. Front Ecol Evol. 
Ostwald et al., 2021, Scientific Reports.
Ostwald et al. 2022. An Beh.
Ostwald et al. Preprint.
Photo by Sebastian Scofield

How does climate change impact social insects and social evolution?

Social strategies can facilitate survival in harsh and stochastic environments. In some contexts, social life histories may confer resilience to climate change. I experimentally manipulate social strategy in insects to understand how social and solitary individuals respond differentially to climatic stressors. 

Read more in:
Baudier and Ostwald et al. 2022
Ostwald et al. 2022. An Beh.
Ostwald et al. 2023. J Comp Physiol.
Ostwald et al. Preprint. 
Ostwald et al. Preprint.

How can computer vision and bioinformatic tools advance research in bee ecology and conservation?

Increasingly, researchers are sharing large datasets on bee occurrences, behaviors, functional traits, and responses to environmental change. However, we lack a centralized data standard for trait measurement or a widespread protocol for data sharing and aggregation. We are working towards the development of a Global Bee Functional Trait Database that would promote synthesis across these diverse data inputs.

We are also leveraging computer vision techniques to automate morphological trait measurements from images of bees. Through repeatable and scalable automation of trait data collection, we can quantify variation in functional traits that are prohibitively challenging to measure manually (e.g., coloration, hairiness, wing venation). These tools will expand our understanding of the functional morphology of bees in the context of environmental change.
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Read more:
Bee Functional Trait Database, GitHub
Ostwald et al. 2023, Ecol Evol