Assoc. Prof Tanya Latty is an insect ecologist with broad interests in insect behaviour and ecology. Her lab motto is ‘Saving the world with insects (and other invertebrates)’.

Her research focuses on a range of challenges including developing better pollination systems for farms, finding ways to create pollinator friendly cities, developing sustainable insect management strategies for agriculture, and using the amazing collective intelligence of ants, bees and slime moulds as inspiration for new technologies.

She is fascinated by the behaviour of organisms and is particularly interested in understanding how group-living organisms make collective decisions. She studies a wide range of organisms (including slime moulds, social insects and velvet worms) and has a special fondness for ‘weird’ and under-studied taxa.

She is passionate about invertebrate conservation and strongly believes that the two goals of protecting invertebrate biodiversity and improving human health and wellbeing can go hand in hand.

Tanya has won several prestigious grants and awards including an ARC fellowship, and a Branco Weiss society in science fellowship (awarded to only 10 people globally each year, in any field of science).

She is an active science communicator and has worked in TV, radio and print media. She is president of the Australian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour, co-founder of ‘Invertebrates Australia’ an organisation dedicated to conservation of Australian invertebrates and sits on the education committee for the Australian Entomological Society.