For this project, he will be spending a lot of time in the Ivory Coast in order to set up methods for keeping fungus farming termites in the lab. The post doc is part of a larger ERC grant, which aims to elucidate how fungus farming termites keep their fungus farm free of pathogens, without the pathogens evolving resistance against the antibiotics used.
Nick will stay affiliated with the University of Helsinki for one more year, in order to analyse a long term dataset (~25 years) on habitat fragmentation and inbreeding in a population of the ant Formica exsecta. Using this extensive dataset, he will analyse the long term effect of demographics on inbreeding, as well as the effect of inbreeding on life history traits such as colony growth, survival and sexual brood production.