Social behaviour is ubiquitous in nature, and lies at the heart of the so-called "major transitions in evolution", which resulted in the progressive evolution of cells, organisms and animal societies. The Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution (LSSE) is interested in the factors that drive such social behaviour, and uses social insects (ants, bees and wasps) as its key model system. Aside from basic research on the evolution of sociality we also study more applied questions relating for example to honeybee diseases, swarm intelligence and evolutionary robotics. Among the techniques we use are video-assisted behavioural observation, pheromone bioassays, functional morphology, evolutionary modeling, computer programming, genetic analysis of kinship patterns and microarray and RNAseq differential expression analysis.

Our team currently comprises two PIs, Prof. Tom Wenseleers and Prof. Johan Billen, four postdocs, nine PhD-students, one research fellow, five masters students, a lab technician and a varying number of visiting researchers. Over the next few years, it is likely that the lab will expand further. If you are interested in doing an internship, PhD or postdoc, please look under vacancies or drop us an email.