Supervisors: Prof. Giovanni Benelli and Prof. Angelo Canale
Research field: Entomology
Research interests: biological control, social wasps, Integrated Pest Management
DAFE – University of Pisa, Via del Borghetto n°80, 56124 – Pisa – (IT)
needhi.thangasamy@phd.unipi.it
Needhi has a background in conservation biology and behavioural ecology. She completed her zoology undergraduate studies in India, followed by a biodiversity and conservation master’s degree at the University of Leeds (UK). Later, she received a scholarship for an Erasmus Mundus joint master’s degree in tropical biodiversity and ecosystems, which was based in Belgium but included semesters in Sri Lanka and Italy as well.
She is mainly interested in the behaviour of social wasps and the ecosystem services provided by them. She is working on publishing the data of her master’s thesis, supervised by Dr. Alessandro Cini, which deals with the selfish herd effect in insects, specifically on nest clusters of the stenogastrid wasp Liostenogaster vechti. For her PhD, she will be researching the behavioral ecology and biocontrol potential of a native social wasp (Polistes dominula) in Italian vineyards, using a blend of both lab and field techniques.
