Anupama Nayak Manel

For my PhD, I study vision in diurnal insects such as the hummingbird hawkmoth and bumblebee to understand the role of floral pattern features in mediating plant-pollinator interactions. Since insects process and navigate the same complex environments that us humans do, except with more limited energy and neural capacity, they make excellent models to understand the mechanisms that drive visual processing. Besides studying how visual patterns drive flower selection and feeding behaviour, I'm also interested in the roles of memory and learning in shaping the plasticity of visually driven behaviours across the insect's lifetime.

Using quantitative behavioural methods, my work delves into the function and mechanism of pattern vision in the context of flower foraging to better understand an 'insect's eye view' of the world.

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Publications

Wright, Manel, et al. (2023): Quantifying visual acuity in Heliconius butterflies | Biology Letters | The Royal Society

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Manel et al. (2025): Strong negative reinforcement interferes with visual learning in a solitary pollinator - ScienceDirect