I am broadly interested in exploring the natural world and on improving sustainability in agriculture. Trained as an agronomist and entomologist I am conducting both applied and fundamental research. Applied research is on crop protection, agricultural entomology and population biology. I am specifically interested on biological pest control and Integrated Pest Management. My research organisms are mainly parasitic wasps and entomopathogenic nematodes, both of which are important in biological pest control as well as being important species for behavioural and ecological disciplines; Fundamental research is on behavioural and evolutionary ecology, with emphasis on life history evolution, sex ratios, contest behaviour and social evolution.
Currently in Benaki Phytopathological Institute, my main research activities are
- The development of Biological control schemes of Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitata by using entomopathogenic nematodes. Check here for more information
- The classical biological control of chestnut gallwasp Dryocosmus kuriphilus by releasing and establishing the parasitoid Torymus sinensis.
- The Development of attract and kill method for Drosophila suzukii in grapes, cherries and other crops.
In the FARCE group of the University of Neuchâtel I contributed to the development of novel application method of Entomopathogenic nematodes for the control of economically important soil-dwelling pests of vegetable crops. Specifically nematodes where enclosed in alginate beads aiming at increasing their residual action in the soils after their application. This work involved both laboratory experiments using chemical ecology approaches and also field trials. I am taught a masters module on’Sustainable Agriculture and Integrated Pest Management’.
The project in the National University of Ireland, Maynooth had two objectives:
1) The improvement of biological control of Large Pine weevil Hylobius abietis using entomopathogenic nematodes ( part of the BIOCOMES project).
2) The use of entomopathogenic nematodes as a new system for studying animal lethal fights.
My “Marie Curie” project in the University of Nottingham, UK was novel in linking nutritional ecology and contest behaviour. For this project I combined behavioural observations and metabolomics approaches that rely on generating metabolite profiles on minute parasitoids wasps with the aims of NMR spectroscopy and UPLC-MS. On another related project I studied communal brood care in the most socially complex parasitoids ever reported.
My doctoral research in the University of California, Riverside was on the biological control of soft scale insect pests of citrus using encyrtid parasitoids. In addition, I conducted both field and laboratory studies which involved a combination of manipulative experiments, field studies and statistics to elucidate how developmental mortality affects sex ratio variance and virginity in parasitoid wasps and how mating structure is linked with sex ratio patterns.
Apostolos Kapranas 