מכון להגנת הצומח

אנטומולוגיה, כימיה ונמטולוגיה

• הררי אלי

  צוות: Eyal Halon (Volcani Center), Russel Jurenka Iowa State University

  The evolution and maintenance of monandry vs polyandry in insects.

  Males in most animal taxa mate multiply (polygyny) and so are females (polyandry), however in some species females mate once only in their life time (polyandry). Costs and benefits are involved in repeated mating as well as in avoiding remating for females and a conflict of interest between males and females is at the base of most mating systems, whereby males benefit form mating with multiple females but loose paternity if females mate multiply. Different mating strategies will be studied as needed using behavioral manipulation, molecular techniques, mathematical modeling, bioinformatics and others.

  השכלה

  Ecology, biology, ecology of sex

  ניסיון

  Writing scientific papers, Molecular tools, statistics

  מיומנויות

  Group working

• הררי אלי

  צוות: Eyal Halon (The Volcani Center), Russel Jurenka, Iowa State University (USA)

  The evolution of sex-pheromones as a sexual trait.

  Sex pheromones may have evolved under natural selection to promote intraspecific mating and avoid the cost of hybrid offspring (interspecific mating), under sexual selection promoting mating with a high quality partner. The first encourage stabilizing selection and low variance among individuals of the signalling sex and strict preference of the receiver for the trait representing the population mean. The second results in high variance of the trait pushing to its extreme by favoring extravagant individuals. the different selection pressure will be studied using behavioral manipulations, chemical ecology, molecular techniques and mathematical modeling

  השכלה

  biology, ecology, evolution

  ניסיון

  chemical ecology, writing scientific papers, statistics

  מיומנויות

  English speaking and writing

• הררי אלי

  צוות: Eyal Halon, Victoria Soroker

  Resistant to male-mating disruption- an environmentally friendly pest control

  The male mating disruption method uses high concentration of the sex pheromone of the target pest to reduce encounters between males and females and thereby reduce the larvae population. However, in the last decade, after many years of repeated use of the technique with high success in reducing the pest population, the pest population has increased. Evidence suggests that the pheromone profile of females in the treated fields has been changed and thus are able to attract males despite the mating disruption treatment. Possible causes to the development of "resistance" to the treatment will be studied as well as ways to overcome it.

  השכלה

  Chemical ecology, biology, Ecology

  ניסיון

  Writing scientific papers, statistics

  מיומנויות

  English speaking, reading and writing

מחלות צמחים וחקר עשבים

• בהר אופיר

  צוות: Prof. Dan Peer, Tel-Aviv University

  Role of bacterial outer membrane vesicles in plant-pathogen interactions

  Bacteria release outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) encapsulating various cellular compounds such as DNA, RNA, toxins, enzymes and more. What goal do those OMV serve when they are released during plant colonization? Do they benefit the pathogen, or impede infection by alerting the plant immune system? these are some of the questions we are trying to answer in this fascinating and cutting edge research.

  השכלה

  PhD

  ניסיון

  Microbiology, Plant-Bacteria interactions

  מיומנויות

  Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Bioinformatics

• בלנק ליאור

  צוות: None

  Modeling the effects of climate change on pests and pathogens distribution

  This project aim at modeling pathogens and pests spatial spread in different climatic condition using habitat suitability modeling, Google Earth Engine and GIS. Some background on the lab and related projects can be found in our group website http://SpatialEpidemiologyLab.weebly.com

  השכלה

  PhD in Ecology, Agriculture, Geography, Statistics, Entomology or a related field

  ניסיון

  • Analyzing spatial data derived from surveys • Integration and analysis of data in GIS • Statistical and geostatistical analyses of the data • Development of automated data processing and analysis tools

  מיומנויות

  GIS, statistics, programming (R,/MArlab/Python/etc)