Last week, I got the opportunity to present at the Australasian Entomology Conference in Canberra on my PhD chapter on hybridisation in Tetragonula hockingsi. I’m also very grateful to have been awarded the IUSSI’s award for best student paper (available here: doi.org/10.1002/ece3...)!

The first paper out of my PhD has just been published! Check out our research on the bacterial microbiota associated with the reproductive tissues of stingless bees, and why we think parastitic reproductive bacteria like Wolbachia might be so uncommon in stingless bees. doi.org/10.1007/s135...

Thank you to the Australian Museum for allowing myself and my lab mate to present joint talks at their student forum on brood mites found within stingless bee colonies! Click here to learn more about these fascinating mites: doi.org/10.11158/saa...

Here are some native bees I’ve observed around Sydney this spring! 📸 1: stingless bee (Tetragonula carbonaria), 📸2&3: carpenter bee (Xylocopa sp.), 📸4: blue-banded bee (Amegilla sp.)

Thanks to JAMS @jamsorgsyd.bsky.social for letting me present last night on the reproductive microbiota of stingless bees, it was a great evening and I also learnt a lot about stick insects and bubble columns!

This week, I was lucky enough to travel to Beijing to present my work on mitochondrial genomics of the stingless bees at #SMBE2025, as well as hear a ton of amazing research from the international evolution community

This week, I was proud to present my work on mitogenome evolution in the Australasian stingless bees at the GSA conference in Auckland #AotearoaGSA2025. I also heard some amazing talks on genetics and genomics, plus a bit of sightseeing (including this cute but invasive bumblebee)

Here are some pictures under the microscope of the gorgeous Austroplebeia australis (first two photos) and cassiae (second two). These two bees, both from northern Queensland, are about to be sequenced so we can better understand the divergence between their populations at a genetic level

If you missed my talk but still want to learn how to make your R code more reproducible, my slides are here 🙂: daxkellie.quarto.pub/will-your-co... All the links to packages and resources I mentioned are there, so hopefully this can be a nice reference, too! #ESAus2024 #rstats #quartopub 🧪🌏

Check out my recently published paper in Ecology and Evolution about mito-nuclear incompatibilities between populations of the stingless bee Tetragonula hockingsi (part of my Honours project, and it's open access!): onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...