Tiffany Tsui

Parasitoid wasps are a large group within the Hymenoptera consisting of 12 superfamilies that are important as biological control (biocontrol) agents of pests and as pollinators. However, while carrying out this ecosystem service, parasitoid wasps can be exposed to a variety of potentially harmful toxins such as pesticides used in agriculture. Current parasitoid wasps pesticide risk assessment relies on experimental data collected for a single ‘model’ species, Aphidius rhipalosiphi. However, parasitoid wasps are a highly diverse group of insects estimated to comprise more than 500,000 species.

My PhD project is a ECORISC NERC CDT project and I am based at the University of Exeter (Penryn Campus), working in partnership with Bayer CropScience. This project aims to create a framework that uses bioinformatics to locate the candidate detoxification gene (cytochrome P450s) in parasitoid wasps in order to develop new tools and predictive pipelines for pollinator pesticide risk assessment.