Thomas O'Shea-Wheller
I am interested in the complex interactions that govern collective behaviour, ecology, and self-organisation within social insects. As a Research Fellow based at the University of Exeter, I leverage deep learning to explore network dynamics, social plasticity, and behavioural heterogeneity in colonies of ants, bees, hornets, and termites. A uniting theme of this work is the study of emergent collective processes to address applied challenges in ecology, specifically via enhanced understanding of their mechanistic bases. As such, my current projects centre upon collective decision-making in ants and termites, social immunity in bees, the role of eusociality in invasive success, and the development of AI-based detection and tracking systems.