New article in Scientific Reports on egg-killing!

Download it from here!


Symposium on Insect-Plant interactions (SIP2017)

230 participants, 63 oral presentations and 105 posters – great success!…


Vidi TTW Users committee progress meeting

In a nice informal room in the Impuls building we had a fruitful second UC progress meeting. Niccolo and me updated the participants on the progress, some failures but also promising first results. Lotte, being in the middle of her maternity leave, was able to come as well. With the gained feedback and summer season ahead we are hopefully approaching more successful months. The next meeting will be at Nunhems/ Bayer in November 2017.


Mini symposium on insect-microbe-plant interactions

Presentations and discussion

In a chique room (with a crappy screen) in Impuls building on the campus we had a nice meeting with several interesting presentations and fruitful discussions. 13 participants from WUR, NIOO and FU Berlin were present including our special guest Martin Kaltenpoth, coming from Mainz early in the morning. Georgios Valsamakis and Luis Paniagua came all the way from Berlin, Eddie Griese from Cologne. All three gave an update on their PhD project, as well as Niccolo Bassetti on the Vidi project. Antonio Cusumano talked about his Marie-Curie project on the 'Impact of third trophic-level symbionts on plant-mediated indirect interactions' and Ana Pineda gave an overview on her research on 'Soil microbes in a world of plant-insect interactions'.

EPS Seminar

Later in the afternoon, Martin gave a seminar at PSG on 'Microbial symbionts for pathogen defense in insects'. For a Friday afternoon quite many people came to listen to Martins' inspiring work on insect symbiosis. With some beers, nachos and pizza in "the Spot' at Orion we closed this nice day before going into the weekend.


First experiments started

Planting first Brassica rapa seedlings

Three weeks before the start of the experiments we were transferring the seedlings to pots.

Mating the butterflies to obtain egg-laying females

Is this a male or a female?

Egg-laying maschines

Female cabbage whites did a quick job by laying 3 single eggs on one leave within a minute.

Collecting leaf material for RNA extraction and qPCR analysis

Sampling leaf disks below and next to the egg.


Gordon Research Conference 2017

Succesful conference

The conference was a great success, with lots of nice talks, entertaining introductions by hosts, great poster presentations and fruitful workshops, as well as plenty of time for networking! More than 200 researchers from the U.S., Germany, The Netherlands and many other countries participated. Great job of the organizers Nicole van Dam and Spencer Behmer!

Poster presentations

Luis Paniagua, Georgios Valsamakis and Vivian Firtzlaff (PhDs @FU Berlin) in front of their poster on 'antibiotic effects on priming of defences by eggs ' which got lots of attention and feedback.

Tweet by Julia Korisheva (Univ. of London, UK) after my talk

Enjoying Californian sun

To overcome the jet lag, we went for a walk on Ventura harbor and beach with Luis, Georgios and others from WUR/FU.

Four Points Sheraton Hotel at Ventura harbour

The Gordon team found a nice venue for the conference. The food and facilities were excellent Only the poster room was too noisy.


BINGO project meeting Delemont

On 17-20 January 2017 we had a meeting with the whole Bingo European consortium, very well organized by CABI (Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International) in Delemont, Switzerland. We had  fruitful and interesting days incl. a workshop, mid-term meeting with the EU project officer and expert, a network meeting with all PhD students presenting their first results, and nice relaxing moments like snowball fights and cheese fondue in a cottage! Read more about BINGO news here.

 

Visit of CABI institute

Project leader Bart Pannebakker presenting a project overview

Sunrise in Delemont

Winter in Delemont

Cheese fondue in a cosy cottage

Bingo team


Dutch Entomology day @Ede

We enjoyed a nice Entomology day (NEV) on Friday, 16 December in the Rehorst, Ede. Lots of interesting talks on insects and people to meet. Niccolo and Lotte from the Vidi team were present for the first time. Sophie had a nice poster on Trichogramma behavior and others from the BINGO team even gave a talk.

fullsizerender fullsizerender-1 6a74f575-3326-45cb-9dff-cb1ebeb9c3fbAlmost complete Vidi team

 

 

 

 

 

 

New generation entomologists: Former and current members from the lab of Entomology (WUR)

 

 

 

 

 

Poster of Sophie


First Vidi users committee meeting

img_6384On 1 Dec we had the first users committee meeting of the NWO/STW Vidi project ‘Pest-killing plants’ with the STW manager incl. 20 members from 5 companies and 10 university departments. We had very fruitful discussions and hopefully we will present some nice first results during the next meeting in May 2017!


European Congress of Entomology 2018

The XIth European Congress of Entomology will be in July 2018 in Naples, Italy.entomology-congress