Boris Baer

Professor Boris Baer, Future Fellow, Centre for Integrative Bee Research (CIBER)

I use Australian honeybees, Panamanian leaf cutting ants and European bumblebees to study aspects of social insect reproduction and immunity. To do this I decided to pursue an integrative approach, which combines biochemical technology and evolutionary biology. An important part of my work is to conduct biochemical analyses and to use their outcomes to formulate hypotheses that can be experimentally tested in the field.

My idea is to help building a new field of research, which I refer to as evolutionary proteomics. Evolutionary proteomics will not only aim to understand evolutionary processes at the protein level, but will also attempt to quantify variations in proteomic profiles and investigate their consequences for natural and sexual selection. The species I use for my work, honeybees, leaf cutting ants and bumblebees are ideal model species for such work as they can be kept in the lab and the availability of techniques such as artificial insemination allow sophisticated experimental manipulations.

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