Hosted by the School of Biological Sciences

Abstract: Nutrition is critical to immune defence and resistance to pathogens, with consequences that affect not only the health, welfare and reproductive success of individual organisms, but also have profound ecological and evolutionary implications. My research focuses in better understanding the network of interactions that defines the relationships between nutrition, immunity, infection, and microbiota to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the key determinants of the outcome of host–pathogen interactions. In this seminar I will talk about my fundamental and applied work on flies, beetles and bees. I will show how basic research in nutrition, immunology and symbiosis can lead to interesting biosecurity applications through, for instance, the use of probiotics in bees and development of control methods for hive beetles. 

Biography: Fleur Ponton arrived in Australia as a Human Frontier Postdoctoral Fellow in 2007. Upon joining the University of Sydney, she developed a new axis of research that aimed to describe the network of interactions that defines the relationships between nutrition, infection, and host fitness. In 2010, Fleur was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the University of Sydney to continue her work in the Simpson’s lab, whereby her research then focused on better understanding key determinants of the outcome of host–symbiont interactions such as nutrition, gut microbiota, and immunity in insects. In 2015, Fleur joined Macquarie University (Sydney) to apply her framework of research to biosecurity questions such as the control of the Queensland fruit flies and to improve the health of honeybees, in parallel to her basic work on Drosophila. The framework and methods originated from Fleur’s research has opened a new avenue in the study of insect-symbiont interactions, and have been applied across disciplines including nutritional sciences and ecology, animal behaviour, as well as agricultural health.