We are a comparative physiology and behavioral ecology lab using social insects as model systems to study social adaptations to environmental stressors. We are interested in how individual behavioral and physiological phenotypes scale to group strategies, and the adaptiveness of these strategies in different complex environments. Our lab has particular interest in ​macrophysiological patterns in the form and function of highly social species, particularly as related to the social dynamics of climate adaptation and competition. 

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Recent Lab News

• 28 March 2025 - Congratulations to Flint Lab / Baudier Lab Honors Scholar Joseph Serio, USM's newest Goldwater Scholar
  
• 15 March 2025 - Congratulations to Undergraduate researcher Noah Williamson for being named a 2025 Beckman award finalist
  
• 28 February 2025 - The Journal Insectes Sociaux just published an Animal Behavior (BSC 455L/555L) course-based project conceived and led by PhD Candidate Kristin Robinson! Check out their work on alarm stridulation in a sub-social beetle here.
• 12 November 2024 - Congratulations to PhD Candidate Kristin Robinson for being awarded first place graduate student talk on Ecology and Climate Change at Entomology 2024!
• 19 June 2024 - Congratulations to PhD Candidate Karen Robles López on receiving the 2024 Tschinkel Ant Natural History Research Grant from the North American Section of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects! This grant will support her dissertation work exploring the relationship between the army ant Eciton burchellii and the Azteca that forage their middens.
• 8 May 2024 - Congratulations to PhD Candidate Kristin Robinson for publishing the first chapter of her dissertation "Stingless bee foragers experience more thermally stressful microclimates and have wider thermal tolerance breadths than other worker subcastes" in a special issue of Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution!
• 20 April 2024 - Congratulations to Joseph Serio and Haley Schonekas on their posters winning second and third place at the 2024 USM Undergraduate Symposium for Research and Creative Activities!
• 5 March 2024 - Our review of ethical insect farming practices has been published in the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed. 
• 8 January 2024 - Congratulations to lab alumnus Alycia Johnson for publishing a natural history note on the nesting biology of the endemic Caribbean paper wasp Mischocyttarus phthisicus in the journal Caribbean Naturalist.
• 15 November 2023 - Our new collaboration paper on mathematical modeling of collective defense behaviors in stingless bees is now published in the Journal of Mathematical Biology!
• 9 November 2023 - Congratulations to PhD Candidate Karen Robles López on first-authoring a journal article about the complex assemblage of tropical ants that use on army ant dump material! Check it out here in the journal Biotropica!
• 3 Jul 2023 - Congratulations to PhD student Kristin Robinson on being awarded the Charles Michener Bee Research Grant by the IUSSI-North American Section to support her dissertation work exploring the interplay between division of labor and desiccation tolerance in stingless bees.​