Dr. Jake Peters, postdoc at the Collective Embodied Intelligence Lab in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Cornell University, will present a free Zoom talk for the Cambridge Entomological Club on March 9 at 7:30 entitled Ecophysiology of Honeybee Colonies. To register email ehoki@g.harvard.edu.

Honeybee colonies exhibit extraordinary control over their microenvironment to maintain suitable conditions for brood rearing, food storage and communication despite fluctuating macroenvironmental conditions. They ventilate their nests to exchange respiratory gasses, modulate their density to control hive temperature and even change their shape to maintain mechanical stability when shaken by the wind. I will share some of my work to uncover the biomechanical and behavioral mechanisms that allow honeybee colonies to coordinate these collective physiological responses. 

Jake Peters received his PhD in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University in 2018. He is now a postdoctoral research fellow in the Collective Embodied Intelligence Lab in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Cornell University. His current work is focused on understanding modes of indirect communication in social insects and how they might inform the design of communication strategies in large groups of small robots.