Staff profile

Carolina Gómez Ramírez

Carolina is biologist from the National University of Colombia, who has been passionate about sensory ecology in bees since her undergraduate days. In 2019, she participated in a project at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, focusing on the immune trade-offs associated with sociality in bees. In 2020, she returned to Barro Colorado Island with a Hollister Smith award to explore the relationship between olfactory structures and sociality in the sweat bee Megalopta genalis. Her experiences in Panama equipped her with skills in performing behavioural experiments and fieldwork. In Autumn 2021, she received funding from DAAD for an internship at Wuerzburg University in Prof. Dr. Thomas Schmitt’s lab. There, she conducted GC/MS analysis of floral volatiles visited by various bumblebee species. Currently, as a Ph.D. student in the Insect Neuro Lab, she studies the floral olfactory preferences of different bumblebee species common to the UK.