Profile

I am a biologist exploring host-parasites interactions while integrating genetics, molecular biology and behavior disciplines. My research focuses on honey bee and bumblebee’s parasites and how do they affect physiology and behavior of their insect hosts. At the early steps of my career I developed a population genetic study on microsporidia parasites of the honey bee Apis mellifera (Nosema ceranae and Nosema apis) to reconstruct the genetic structure along its range of distribution (Gómez-Moracho et al. 2015) and investigate the existence of genetic variants in different geographic regions where different parasite virulence on honey bee colonies was reported (Dussaubat et al. 2013, Van der Zee et al. 2014). My research has been in close contact with the problematic of the honey bee colony losses that is observed worldwide and for what there is still not a single caused described. The aim of this project was identifying the main agents responsible for the death of colonies and investigating their incidence on honey bees by monitoring several professional apiaries in Spain that were reporting a huge loss of colonies and screen honey bee colonies using molecular techniques (PCR) (Cepero et al. 2014, Cepero et al. 2015). Later, I developed studies to analyse the virulence and pathogenicity of the trypanosomatids parasites of honey bees Crithidia mellificae and Lotmaria passim (Gómez-Moracho et al. 2020). Nowadays, at my current position as a Post doc at the Centre Nationale de Recherchers Scientifiques (CNRS) I aim to analyze the effects of parasite on bee cognition and behaviour. To build my project, I reviewed the main parasites and pathogens of bees, to know how they affect bee cognition and the main defense mechanism of bees (Gómez-Moracho et al. 2017). I use bumblebees as model organisms. The first objective of my project is to assess the effect of the parasite N. ceranae on bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) cognition. The second objective of my project is to investigate whether bumblebees can fight the parasite and self-medicate by adjusting their food intake. Along these years I developed some methodological works. I designed a new PCR that improved the diagnostic and characterization of the parasite Acarapis woodi in honey bees (Cepero et al. 2014). I participated to the development of connected hives (honey bee hives equipped with sensors) to automatically analyse bee population dynamics in the face of environmental stressors (Marchal et al. 2019). As a result, I have contributed to national (5) and international (7) congresses and I am author of 25 scientific papers included in the Science Citation Index and 3 book chapters (Google Scholar: 433 citations, H index = 11).