Passionate about arthropodology and digital tools, I am currently leading a research project in behavioural neuroscience at the Department of Biology at Lund University as part of my PhD under Professor Marie Dacke.

🌱 As a child, I loved going outdoors to observe insects, equipped with a butterfly net and a simple plastic box with a magnifying glass. My academic journey has been shaped by this desire to explore and understand these organisms, so ubiquitous yet so different from us.

After earning a bachelor's degree in biology and ecology, which provided me with a strong foundation in natural sciences and scientific methodology, I pursued a master’s degree in functional, behavioural, and evolutionary ecology. This programme allowed me to deepen my knowledge in ethology and sensory ecology while developing expertise in data analysis and programming applied to the study of living organisms.

Throughout my experiences, I have had the opportunity to conduct multiple research projects both in the lab and the field, including a research project in New Zealand focused on the courtship behaviour of an endemic species of fishing spiders. Later, my second year of my master’s degree, which was centred on ecological modelling, enabled me to gain advanced skills in Bayesian statistics, programming in R and Python, and biological process simulations. This culminated in my master’s thesis on modelling neural systems involved in orientation and decision-making in bees.

Alongside my academic work, my involvement as the president of the "Naturalist Circle of Nantes Students" strengthened my passion for science communication and knowledge sharing. Through organising nature outings, conferences, and species identification workshops, I was able to combine my interest in biodiversity with my desire to share science with a broad audience.

My training and experiences have led me to develop a multidisciplinary expertise that blends behavioural ecology, neuroscience, data analysis, and modelling, which I also refined during my studies at the "École Normale Supérieure" alongside my master’s. Curious and meticulous, I enjoy tackling scientific questions from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining approaches to better understand the complexity of life.

🪲 Though unappealing to us, the faeces of many herbivores are a highly localised yet valuable resource for dung-feeding species. More than 100 species of dung beetles can be found on a single dropping, making competition one of the main driving forces behind the diversification of behavioural strategies. Among these, so-called telecoprid beetles roll their dung into balls and move away in a straight line as far as possible. Maintaining such a course is no trivial feat, especially for a small organism pushing up to 50 times its body weight backwards! This task requires a robust mechanism to stay on track: a compass.

Of course, these insects have not secretly developed the industry needed to manufacture such instruments. However, like many other animals, they are capable of forming a mental representation of the various elements in their environment and using them for orientation, a mental compass! We humans use this ability constantly. In fact, as my supervisors demonstrated in an experiment, once blindfolded and deprived of our senses, we are unable to walk in a straight line for more than a few metres. Just as a person will keep their trajectory parallel to the walls when walking down a corridor, dung beetles always seek to maintain a reference point, for instance, keeping the sun to their left, to stay on course.

This is not limited to the sun; they can also rely on light intensity gradients, polarised light patterns, wind direction, and even the Milky Way in some nocturnal species! However, this elegant story, linking faeces to the stars, is not without its complications. A single cloud passing in front of the sun or a sudden shift in wind direction can render these cues unreliable.

How do dung beetles integrate all these signals, adapting to their complexity and fluctuating reliability? This is the focus of my research project, which seeks to understand how these variations affect the beetles' perception and behaviour, and how their neural networks interpret this information. Through behavioural experiments and modelling tools, I aim to unravel the mechanisms behind their navigation strategies.