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The lab in 2018

12/12/2018

It’s been a while, and a very big year! We’ve had several lab trips, have moved country and picked up a new lab member, Siddhant Pusdekar, since our last big update! The lab is now based out of the St Paul campus of the University of Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, and we’re all looking forward to all the new opportunities open to us and experiencing a new environment.

The lab is still in the process of being set up, and almost all of the boxes are now unpacked!

America field trip 2017

10/3/2017

We're back from our field trip out to look at Holcocephala fusca in Pennsylvania in the US! Paloma, Sam, Jack, Sergio and Mary went out for five+ weeks for the end of the fusca season. We recorded some really interesting behaviour and got a lot of data from the electrophysiology rig that we took out with us, as well as getting a really fun insight into American life! Watching the eclipse through reflections off mirrors used for flies was particularly memorable. A very short stopover in Iceland also netted us a trip round the geysers and Gulfoss, for a nice change of pace! Hopefully over the rest of the year we can get into all the data we collected and analyse it into something truly exciting!

Killer flies on the radio!

10/3/2017

We recently had our killer fly work featured on the BBC radio programme CrowdScience, and can be found here

There is an accompanying video to show some of the flies in flight

Holcocephala in the press

4/14/2017

Our recent research on Holcocephala vision has been receiving press attention across the internet!

BBC News
"Robber fly: Hunting secrets of a tiny predator revealed"

NY Times
"The Rice-Size Fly That Hits the Bull’s-Eye Every Time"

Reuters
"Tiny Predator is Top Gun of the Insect World"

Cambridge Science Festival 2017

3/20/2017

The lab had a lot of interest at our stall at the Cambridge Science Festival, this March 18th. Featuring the chance to make an ommatidia to build up a compound eye, hunt like a mantis shrimp, and an augmented reality setup so you can see the world through the eyes of a fly!

A Novel Interception Strategy in a Miniature Robber Fly with Extreme Visual Acuity

3/20/2017

We have a new paper out in Current Biology! As part of our research on the predatory flights of the robber fly Holcocephala fusca

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982217300854

Target detection in insects: optical, neural and behavioral optimizations

10/24/2016

There's been a new paper published in Current Opinion in Neurobiology, detailing the limitations of small size in terms of insect predators and how they have adapted to cope with these.

The paper is available here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959438816301180

Research Horizons

10/24/2016

The lab was featured on the front cover of the Neuroscience spotlight issue of Research Horizons, the University of Cambridge journal, and had an article detailing the efforts to understand the neural circuits and how they deal with miniaturisation.

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Cambridge Science Festival

6/15/2016

Paloma gave a public talk at the Cambridge Science Festival, entitled "What can tiny nervous systems do?"

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Killer flies on BBC Science

6/15/2016

The lab's killer flies are featured in an article on the Killer Fly Hunger Games, including a video of a hunt.

The article can be found at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34390345