The ecosystem response to urban transformation: the impact of rapid urbanisation on the social demographics of ecologically-significant insect species

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Landscapes across the world are undergoing rapid urbanisation. We will investigate the role of urban living in the life of an ecologically prominent social insect, wasps of the genus Polistes in Brazil. Do urbanised landscapes host higher densities of colonies? Does life in artificial environments recalibrate the demographics of social species? Does this have implications for social behaviour? Is an urbanised world a new ecological context to which social behaviour must adapt? Are ancestral evolutionary strategies helped or hindered by the transition to urbanisation? We will address fascinating questions such as these through thorough behavioural analyses of Brazil's polistine wasps, using a host of cutting-edge technologies - including advanced sociogenomics (the study of social behaviour and the genome) and intricate radio-tagging of wasps in the wild.