Emily Bailes

My interests surround the interactions between animals (particularly pollinators), plants and microbes, especially in an applied context. I think that looking at these interactions is really important for our understanding of evolution as well as the way we need to approach solving problems such as pollination services for food supply and the spread of diseases in bee populations.

Currently I am working as a post-doctoral researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London. My research there surrounds parasites and diseases in bumblebees, especially in the context of wildflower strips on farms. I am particularly interested in working out if some flowers are more hygenic than others!

My PhD research was with Beverley Glover at the Cambridge University, where I worked on field (broad) bean flowers. There we were looking at how we could breed for flowers that attracted more bees to the crop and potentially also improved the amount of food available when the crop is grown.