Thesis subject
High-Speed Visualization and Quantification of Ovipositor Insertion
Parasitic wasps probe in substrates to find hosts for egg-laying. They do this by using their ovipositors, slender structures at the end of their abdomen, consisting of multiple elements that slide along each other.
Previous experiments showed that wasps can probe and steer in any direction without changing their body orientation. It appears that they do this by separately controlling the amount and direction of the bending of the ovipositor tip. Whereas the amount of bending correlates with the amount of pro- and retraction of individual elements, it is not clear how they control the bending direction. First stage of the project aims to study this bending mechanism. The project can be further extended to targeted ovipositor insertion or to studying the avoidance capabilities of ovipositors during insertions.
For questions or application (incl. CV and letter of motivation), please contact Uros Cerkvenik.
| Examiner: | Prof. Dr. Ir. Johan L. van Leeuwen |
| Supervisors: | Uros Cerkvenik |
| Sander Gussekloo | |
| Contact: | Uros Cerkvenik (via contact form) |
| Begin date: | 01/05/2017 (variable) |
| End date: | 31/12/2017 (variable) |
| Credits: | 12 ECTS (variable) |
| For: | BSc Biology |
| Requirements: | See thesis description |
| Used skills: | Experimental work with Animals, 2D and/or 3D Motion Analysis, Programming in Matlab/Python |