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July 2013: Lab field trip to entomological R&D sites in the Galilee
August 2013: Yael Keinan presented a poster at the European Society of Evolutionary Biology conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Yael's trip was supported by a travel grant from the Zoological Society of Israel
September 2013: End of the first field season in the pomegranate study! (Photo (1) above).
October 2013: Our study on conservation biocontrol in vineyards was featured in the Israeli popular press.
November 2013: A new grant from the Ministry of Agriculture will enable our lab to study area-wide dynamics and diversity of Lepidoptera and their natural enemies in agro-ecosystems.
December 2013: Miriam Kishinevsky was awarded a prize for academic excellence by the University of Haifa.
February 2014: Alon Ornai joined the lab to study pollination networks on Mount Carmel.
March 2014: A new grant from USAID-MERC, in collaboration with colleagues in Ben Gurion University and in Jordan, to study Ziziphus forests in drylands. Two additional grants, from Nekudat Chen and MAARAG, for biodiversity surveys of arthropods in vineyards.
April 2014: Lab field trip to the Hula valley with our research collaborators from Scotland.
October 2014: Miriam Kishinevsky presented her research at the annual conference of the Entomological Society of Israel.
December 2014: Roei Shaham presented his research at the annual conference of the Israeli Zoological Society.
January 2015: Roei Shaham submitted and defended his MSc thesis. Einat Bar-Ziv joined the lab as research assistant.
March 2015: Idan Shapira joined the lab as post-doctoral scholar, working on insect biodiversity in and around vineyards.
April 2015: Lab field-trip to Lakhish with our research collaborators from Scotland (photo (2) above).
May 2015: Yael Keinan's and Miriam Kishinevsky's PhD proposals were approved. End of the field season in the Carmel pollination research (photo (3) above), start of the second field season in the pomegranate study.
Sept 2015: Yael Keinan was awarded the best student presentation prize at the Entomophagous Insect Conference in Spain.
Oct 2015: Alon Ornai presented his research at the annual meeting of the Israeli Entomological Society.
March 2016: Lab field trip to the Tabor winery (photo 4 above) and our field site at the Sirin wineyard.
June 2016: Miriam Kishinevsky was awarded the best student presentation prize at the Israel Ecology Society Conference.
July 2016: A new grant from the Israel Science Foundation to study learning in bees. Einat Bar-Ziv left the lab for a research internship in Africa, and a PhD study on hyena ecology at Ben Gurion University.
October 2016: Lab bird-watching field trip, and farewell to Ben Dvir who went on a long tour in New Zealand and the far East. Ayelet Allon joined the lab as research assistant. A new grant from the Israel Land Authority, to continue our study on biodiversity in vineyards (photo 5 above). Alon Ornai's reseach was presented at the Eurobee7 conference in Romania. And, three papers based on our studies were published this month!
January 2017: Alon Ornai defended his MSc thesis.
February 2017: Alon Ornai's reseach was presented at the Medecos 2017 conference in Romania. Two papers based on Idan Shapira's study of biodiversity in vineyards were accepted for publication.
March 2017: Lab field trip in the Yizrael valley (photo 6 above) and a farewell BBQ to Alon Ornai, who started a teaching position at Oranim College. Gaby Moller, a new MSc student from Guatemala (joint supervision with Michal Segoli at Ben Gurion University) arrived to Israel.
April 2017: Start of the field season in the vineyard research.
May 2017: Miriam Kishinvesky won two student travel grants to visit research labs in North America, and to attend the Entomophagous Insect Conference in Japan. Alon Ornai presented his research at a conference of the Jewish National Fund.
June 2017: Miriam Kishinevsky won the Katzir travel award, which will fund her visit to research labs in North America to train in parasitoid systematics. Her paper on companion plants, and Yael Keinan's paper on the intra-specific variation in parasitoid ovigeny are out - check out the publications page.
Sept 2017: Our new paper on sugar feeding in natural communities of parasitoids is out - check the publications page. Ayelet Alon will be leaving the lab to start her MD studies at Tel Aviv University.
October 2017: Congratulations to Miriam Kishinevsky on winning the oral presentation award at the International Entomophagous Insect Conference, Japan. Welcome Shivani - a new post-doc at the lab. Shivani will work on learning of morphologically complex flowers by bumblebees.
December 2017: Our paper on the relationships between flower color, spines and flowering season in Asteeraceae has been published - check the publications page.
March 2018: A visit from our collaborator, Eric Wajnberg (INRA, France), with a lab field-trip to Mt. Carmel.
April 2018: Three new publications on different aspects of parasitoid ecology: polyembryony, egg maturation and response to mating disruption of agricultural pests. Check the publications page.
May 2018: Yochai Leber presented his undergraduate thesis research on pollination in Ziziphus spina-christi.
June 2018: A concert by lab alumnus Idan Shapira. A review paper by Shivani, on morphological complexity in the flowers, has been published.
July 2018: Shivani, Miriam and Gaby presented their research projects at the European Congress of Entomology in Naples, Italy. We also participated in the 5th meeting of the Israeli parasitoid forum at Tel Aviv University, complete with a tour of the newly opened Museum of Natural History.
August 2018: Non-crop habitat doesn't always benefit pest control. We contributed data to this recently-published paper. In a second publication, we find that pests and their natural enemies use different habitats in vineyards.
October 2018: Miriam's presentation was awarded second prize at the Israel Entomological Society conference. And: why hasn't polyembryony conquered the world? Our just-published evolutionary simulation model addresses this question.
November 2018: Yael completed and submitted her PhD thesis. A first set of robotic flowers, developed by Shivani, is now operational.
December 2018: Miriam completed and submitted her PhD thesis.
January 2019: Congratulations to Miriam on winning the Rothschild post-doc fellowship, to continue her research on agroecology of parasitoids at the University of Wisconsin!
February 2019: Congratulations to Gabriella on winning the 2018 Excellence award for Master's studies at Ben-Gurion University!
March 2019: Welcome Gabriella upon returning from a semester of study at Brandenburg University, Germany as an Erasmus exchange fellow. and: Lab tour and picnic at the Beit Govrin caves (Photo 7 above).
April 2019: Welcome Bracha Schindler, a new post-doc in the lab. Bracha will study the community dynamics of parasitoids in vineyards following insecticide applications. And: Congratulations to Gabriella, recipient of the second-place student presentation award at the Israeli Conference for Conservation Science.
May 2019: Check out our new paper on combining odor conditioning of parasitoids with mating disruption of agricultural pests. Yael and Miriam received their PhD diplomas.
June 2019: Gabriella submitted her MSc thesis, dealing with the effects of weed management on parasitoids in vineyards.
July 2019: Welcome Achiad Sviri, a new Master's student at the lab. Congratulations to Miriam on winning the Weizman Institute's Women Scientist post-doc scholarship. Yael's new paper on maternal effects in parasitoids is out. And: a multi-author new synthesis paper, accepted for publication in Science Advances. Please see here for a pre-print.
August 2019: Our new paper, published in Animal Behaviour, describes how bees deal with complex vs. simplified flowers of the same species.
September 2019: Gabriella successfully defended her MSc thesis.
October 2019: Congratulations to Bracha, recipient of an Israel Academy of Sciences post-doc fellowship for research in the national collections of natural history! Bracha will do part of her research in the terrestrial arthropod collection at the Hebrew University.
December 2019: We discuss how to make desert forestry more sustainable in a new review article in Annals of Forest Science.
January 2020: Gathering submissions for a special issue of MDPI Plants, on Plant-pollinator Interactions in Mediterranean-type Ecosystems (8).
May 2020: Our proposal for an international research group on "Mathematical Modelling of Biological Control Interaction to Support Agriculture and Conservation" has been accepted (9)! The group is co-organized by Eric Wajnberg (INRA, France) and Michal Segoli (Ben Gurion University). It will run at the Israel Institute of Advanced Studies during February-June 2022.
June 2020: We have started a collaboration with Dr. Moshe Nagari (Shamir Institute), investigating the interactions between orchard-pollinating bumblebees, wild bees and wild plants.
Read how bees and flowers react to maintenance activities of fire buffer zones, in a new paper based on Alon Ornai's MSc research.
October 2020: Welcome Nitsan Nachtom, a new MSc student at the lab! Nitsan will study how commercial bumblebees affect wild plants and bees near cherry orchards.
How do complexity-related flower traits affect visits by different bees? We use machine-learning approaches to address this question in a new paper (Ornai & Keasar 2020).
November 2020: How does flowering synchrony change along the season in a desert tree, and why? A new paper based on three-year field observations (Tel Zur & Keasar 2020).
December 2020: Sugar feeding in natural communities of parasitoids changes along the seasons, shows our new paper (Kishinevsky & Keasar 2021).
Congratulations to Achiad Sviri on winning the student presentation prize (2nd place) at the annual meeting of the Israel Zoological Society!
January 2021: Conserving parasitoids in vineyards while reducing herbicide use, a new paper led by Gaby Moller.
March 2021: A new grant from the Israel Science Foundation (together with Michal Segoli, Ben Gurion University) will allow us to organize an international workshop on modeling of insect trophic interactions in June 2022.
April 2021: Another new grant from DFG (together with Yuval Sapir, Tel Aviv University and Johannes Spaethe, University of Wuerzburg) will allow us to explore the ecology of flower color polymorphism in anemones.
May 2021: Practicing a difficult motor tasks helps bees deal with a different difficult task, shows our new paper led by Shivani Krishna. We are developing AI methods for identifying field-caught insects from sticky traps - see the new paper led by Alex Gerovichev.
October 2021: Welcome Tzlil and Norah, new members of the Anemone flowering ecology team!
December 2021: How do solar energy structures in agricultural ecosystems affect local biodiversity? A new grant from the Israel Ministry of Energy will allow us to explore this question. In collaboration with Ido Izhaki, Yohay Carmel, Asaf Ben-David and Ofri Gabay.
January 2022: How quickly do parasitoid wasp communities recover from insecticide sprays in vineyards? See Bracha's new publication (Schindler et al., 2022).
April 2022: Life-history traits of parasitoids from agricultural and natural habitats, and across a climate gradient - out in Ecological Entomology.
May 2022: Can planting of Christ thorn trees promote sustainable agriculture in desert areas? Our lab will lead a USAID-MERC-funded project to find out, in collaboration with scientists from Jordan and Israel.
June and September 2022: Achiad and Alex successfully defended their MSc theses, dealing with the automated monitoring (Alex) of host-parasitoid population dynamics (Achiad). Achiad presented his work at the Ecological Society of Israel's meeting, and won the best conservation presentation award.
July 2022: An ISF grant will fund our continuing work on flower complexity: from functional definition to pollination networks.
October 2022: Welcome Liraz, a new PhD student, studying the ecological impacts of solar energy structures in agroecosystems.
December 2022: Welcome Sasha and Leah, new research assistants in the lab.
January 2023: Tzlil's PhD research proposal approved. Which life-history traits of bees contribute to foraging on morphologically complex flowers? a new theoretical paper, in collaboration with Eric Wajnberg and Odile Pourtallier.
February 2023: Insecticides can harm natural enemies and might disrupt biological control of crop pests. In a new model, we discuss how to integrate this insight into consideration into spraying decisions.
March 2023: Norah presented her research at the annual Israel Plant Ecology conference.
April 2023: Tzlil and Tamar visited the Anemone pavonina research site on Mt. Olympus, Greece, together with our collaborators from the University of Wuerzburg - see photo (10) in the picture gallery.
May 2023: Why is it so hard to predict whether an insect would make a good biocontrol agent? Check out our new paper in TREE.
