People

PhD students

Simon Connolly

Simon is a PhD candidate researching New Zealand nursery web/fishing spiders. His work focuses on mating behaviour, monogyny, evolution and introgression.

Masters students

Grant Fale

Grant Fale is a MSc student at the University of Waikato as well as a member of the Productive Biodiversity & Pollination team at Plant and Food Research NZ. He is interested in the interaction between invasive honey bees and native solitary bees with a particular focus on these interactions when foraging on the commercially valuable mānuka tree.

Rene Devenish

Rene Devenish is a MSc student at the University of Waikato. She is studying the functional relationship between behaviour and metabolism under rising temperatures in native bees and honeybees in New Zealand. Her supervisors are Chrissie Painting and Andrew Barnes.
Eco Div Lab

Erin Steed

Erin Steed is a MSc student at the University of Waikato. She is studying honey bee mating sites (drone congregation areas) and their potential role in predicting varroa mite infestation rates of feral and managed honey bee colonies, in collaboration with Dr Ashley Mortensen at Plant & Food Research. 
Ashton McDonald is a MSc student at the University of Waikato. She is interested in ways to reduce the slaughter of bobby calves to give them a life worth living. She is investigating the effect of different feed allowances on calve growth weights and their behaviours in collaboration with Chrissie Painting and Karin Schutz (AgResearch).
Tori Budd is a MSc student at the University of Waikato. Tori is interested in New Zealand glow worm biology, and is investigating the ecology and behaviour with a particular focus on mating dynamics for her project.

Past PhD students

Erin Powell

Erin was a PhD student at the University of Auckland supervised by Greg Holwell, Tony Hickey and Chrissie Painting looking at weaponry and mating behaviour of long legged harvestmen.

Past Masters students

Sarah Hockings & Nicole Haerewa

Sarah (left) was a MSc student at the University of Auckland working on characterising sperm competition and polyandry in the New Zealand giraffe weevil using a combination of field based observations and microsatellite genotyping.
Nicole (right) was a MSc student at the University of Auckland researching geographic variation in sexual selection and the role of heat loss in driving variation in rostrum investment in the New Zealand giraffe weevil.

Rebecca Le Grice

Rebecca did her Masters of Science (with 1st Class Hons) in 2014/2015 with Greg Holwell and I. Bex looked at the competitive assessment strategies (fighting) and lifetime mating success of NZ giraffe weevils.

Joseph McCormick

Joseph is doing his MSc at the University of Sydney supervised by Tanya Latty & Tom White, but was briefly based at in the Invertebrate Behavioural Ecology lab during COVID travel restrictions where he kicked off his experiments. His research focuses on information transfer dynamics in social insects.

Michaela Lambert

Michaela completed a MSc at the University of Waikato looking at sperm dynamics in New Zealand giraffe weevils. She loves all invertebrates, no matter how leggy or bizarre!

Lara Mills

Lara completed a MSc at University of Waikato looking at assessment strategies of invertebrates in male contests. She is interested in all things animal behaviour and physiology.

Brody Chapman

Brody was a MSc student at the University of Waikato. His research involved the behavioural ecology of peripatus/ngaokeoke in the Waikato region, particularly in the way that forest fragmentation and edge environments affects distribution.

Past Honours students

Wee Huixin Renee

Renee did her Honours with Daiqin Li and Chrissie Painting at the National University of Singapore looking at the function of bright colouration in Orsima ichneumon jumping spiders.

Anna Probert

Anna investigated the ecology and variation of chelicerae size of some pretty amazing harvestmen under supervision of Greg Holwell and Chrissie Painting at the University of Auckland

Daniel Townsend

Daniel looked at sexual selection and weapon allometry in endemic New Zealand harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones). He was supervised by Greg Holwell and Chrissie Painting.