New post!

after some time (21 years) I am back to my ‘Alma mater‘

Assistant Professor of Entomology and Biological Control

at School of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Return to Greece

2018 brings a whole new beginning, having returned to my homeland Greece after the end of the grand tour around Europe for about 6 years. I am now a Senior research entomologist in Benaki Phytopathological Institute,  the frontline institute for crop protection and plant health in Greece. My primary responsibilities will be research on developing new solutions in insect pest control including biological and biotechnological approaches, as well investigating and monitoring invasive species. I will also keep pursuing fundamental research questions on evolutionary and behavioural ecology.

 

new Scientific Reports paper on parasitoid metabolomics

Insects have played a considerable role in the study of animal behaviour and ecology. Empirical investigations chiefly involve the observation of individuals, which quite frequently are small sized organisms (low biomass). Environmental and behavioural changes can influence the metabolome of an individual organism, the alteration of which has been demonstrated to both directly and indirectly affect organism fitness and behaviour. However, chemical analysis and metabolomics studies of low biomass insects have hitherto relied on pooling of samples to obtain sufficient sensitivity using instrumental techniques such as LC-MS & NMR. Such whole organism sample pooling imposes a loss of statistical power associated with the reduction of the number of replicates and a loss of information regarding how inter-individual variation in metabolite concentrations may affect an organism’s behavioural state. It is therefore highly desirable to generate metabolomics data from individual organisms rather than pooled samples when behavioural/developmental data is acquired.

In a new study published in Scientific Reports, we demonstrate a new application for generating NMR and MS metabolomic datasets based on single insect analysis, which is made possible by optimising existing sample extraction procedures. Unlike previous low-biomass metabolomics studies, this approach aims simultaneously to measure both polar and lipid metabolites by employing a modified Bligh and Dyer extraction coupled with NMR and LC-MS analysis. We use these established methods to generate metabolite profiles of individual Goniozus legneri (parasitoid wasps) and to reveal the metabolic effects of aging in this organism.

Goniozus legneri individuals are minute in size, weighing approximately 1 mg. The developed protocol allows validated, untargeted metabolomics profiling of both polar and non-polar metabolites and we demonstrate its use for the first time to detect differential metabolite profiles in these tiny insects. We show that large changes in metabolic profiles were observed between newly emerged and older wasps in glycerolipids, amino acids and circulatory sugars.

Our study is not only of interest for addressing the practical obstacles faced in metabolomics studies, and particularly NMR, but also sets the stage for the integration of metabolomics into behavioural and ecological studies, particularly as many studied species are of minute size. Moreover, determination of the age of field-caught individuals can be important in understanding their ecology and behaviour and thus can also generate improvements to ecosystem services, such as biological pest control and pollination, provided by studied species of parasitoids and other insects.

This study was contacted in the University of Nottingham and was funded by a Marie Curie fellowship (FP-7) and a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), UK PhD studentship to Charles Snart.

Next destination: Switzerland!

It is time to ‘leave the cat out of the bag’! Beginning January 2016 I am starting my new post as a Postdoc fellow in Ted Turlings group of ‘Fundamental and applied research in chemical ecology’, in the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. I will continue on Entomopathogenic nematode work and maybe-possibly some parasitoid work on the long run. So exciting new stuff: ‘chemical ecology’ with nematodes (and possibly other critters!). I will also be involved in teaching for the postgraduate course on ‘Integrated Crop Management’!

New paper on quasisocial parasitoid wasps

Last year as a Marie Curie Fellow in the University of Nottingham, I and Ian Hardy participated in a very interesting and exciting project in China. Along with colleagues from the Nanjing Agricultural University and the Forest Academy of Jiangsu Province in China we studied the behaviour of some peculiar Bethylid wasps to find out why they have communal brood care in large beetle hosts. These wasps are used in augmentative biological control against major beetle pests of forests. A paper on this study published last week in Nature Communications describes how cooperative brood care in these parasitoid wasps leads to higher reproductive success and that the benefit of sharing a host does not have to depend on relatedness. It is even shown that the extremely female biased sex ratios is a result of the cooperative brood care – it is advantageous to live in an enviroment with daughters from other females who can help with host utilization (Local Resource Enhancement) -rather the result of males competing for females (Local Mate Competition) as it is usually found in other gregarious parasitoids.

Sclerodermus harmandi females tending their communal brood on a beetle larva

This publication is now recommended on ‘Faculty of 1000’ 

Moving to Ireland

2014 could not start better: after about 2.5 years in the University of Nottingham, I am leaving UK to assume my new post as an EU Senior postdoctoral researcher in NUI Maynooth, Ireland. I am delighted that a whole new world is ahead of me: the world of Entomopathogenic nematodes and their use in Biological control.  Some may think that as a behavioural ecologist would not find Nematodes that interesting. However, my post has some scope in developing a novel research program on their molecular and behavioural ecology! As far concerned Ireland I will be enjoying some fine Irish music while getting the highest quality of Guinness and Jameson! Of course I will miss my friends in Nottingham and UK but Dublin is just a short fly away!

Apostolos Kapranas

I studied  Agriculture/Crop protection in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (2000) and I hold a PhD in Entomology from the University of California Riverside (2006). Since then I have held numerous academic research and teaching positions in institutes in USA, Greece and in UK (Marie Curie Fellow in University of Nottingham). Currently I am a senior Postdoctoral Fellow in the National University of Ireland, Maynooth