Sociobiology of Communication: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Associate Professor Patrizia d'Ettorre is at the Centre for Social Evolution, University of Copenhagen. Here she is the leader of a Marie Curie Excellence team that studies the evolutionary basis of chemical communication and recognition in insect societies. Her background is in evolutionary biology and the resolution of conflict within societies. Her personal interest in communication is not restricted to social insects, she is expanding herexpertise in the evolutionary biology of chemical communication into various interfaces with other relevant disciplines using a variety of model organisms (from insects to humans). Prior to her current position she was a post-doc at the university of Regensburg in Germany and at the University of Tours in France. Shereceived her PhD from the University of Parma, Italy, in 1996.Dr David P. Hughes is a Marie Curie research fellow at the Centre for Social Evolution, University of Copenhagen. He is interested in the manipulation of social insects by parasites, the evolution of virulence in social insects and organismal biology of parasites in social insect hosts. Before his current position he held a postdoctoral position in Oulu, Finland. He received his PhD from Oxford in 2003.