Author: Nina

Dr. Bassetti, congrats – you made it!

Niccolo succesfully defended his thesis on ‘Genetics and evolution of butterfly egg-killing in Brassica’ last monday. He was my first PhD student when I started at Biosystematics in 2016. I will truly miss him and wish him all the best for the future!


New publication by Corne van der Linden in Biological Control


First thesis chapter published by Niccolo Bassetti in BMC Plant Biology!


Yes, finally, Eddie Griese obtained his PhD degree!

Eddie successfully defended his thesis entitled “Battle between insect eggs and host plant: Ecology and evolution of pierid egg-induced responses in Brassicaceae” last Monday in front of a tough committee in the Aula of Wageningen University. Besides, he can immediately start his new job as an ecologist in an agency near Berlin. Congratulations to both…


Final NWO Vidi user committee meeting

Yesterdays final meeting was in-person and a nice closer of a successful 5-years project.


Dr. Georgios Valsamakis, congratulations to receiving your PhD!

Still online, Georgios did a great job in defending his thesis. His talk and defence was even a summa cum laude (!), and in total he got a cum laude! All three female supervisors are super proud of him 🙂 And now up to a nice and successful postdoc time!


New publication by Afentoulis et al. in Front Ecol Evol


New Publication New Phytologist Griese, Caarls et al.


New publication by Valsamakis et al. in Front Plant Sci

Priming by timing: the longer Pieris brassicae eggs are exposed to A. thaliana plants the stronger the plants’ response and the more the hatching larvae suffer from it. This work has largely been conducted by Georgios Valsamakis, Vivien Lortzing and Norbert Bittner in the group of Monika Hilker.


New PhD students working on hitch-hiking Trichogramma wasps

Liana and Xianhui (from left) both just started their PhD on the ecology, evolution and genetics of anti-sex pheromones of passion-vine/cabbage white butterflies and natural selection by hitch-hiking egg parasitoids spying on these pheromones. Both will have supervisors from Biosystematics group and the Laboratory of Genetics @WUR. They will conduct field work either in Panama or The Netherlands, olfactometer bioassays, analyse pheromones and the genetics behind them.