A big, warm welcome to Dr Maura Haas-Renninger, Andrew Stempel, and Callum Bush – our group’s 3 newest members. We look forward to working and collaborating with you all. Keep reading to learn more about their backgrounds and what they’ll be working on in the ISB lab.

Dr Maura Haas-Renninger (Humbolt Fellow)
Wasp Taxonomy and Systematics

Dr Maura Haas-Renninger (she/her) is a microhymenoptera ecologist and taxonomist. She did her doctoral degree at the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart in Germany, working on the ecological role of microhymenoptera and their potential threat by insect decline. She aims to gather knowledge on understudied parasitoid wasp groups in order to develop measures to better conserve them in the future. She is also interested in the interaction of parasitoid wasps and their hosts and how it drives their diversification. In the ISB lab, she will be working on the parasitoid wasp family Mymaridae, also known as fairy wasps. These minute wasps are highly understudied in Australia, which is why she will use a Large-Scale Integrative Taxonomy approach including morphology and molecular markers to assess and describe the diversity of Australia’s mymarids.

Andrew Stempel (PhD student)

Andrew Stempel (he/him) is a PhD candidate studying subterranean invertebrates, with a particular fascination for large, eyeless cave-adapted spiders of the Nullarbor Plain. His research combines morphological and molecular taxonomy, alongside ancient DNA approaches, to document and describe new species from these remote underground ecosystems. With a strong focus on conservation, his work aims to better understand and protect the unique biodiversity of Australia’s cave systems. Andrew is also President of the Australian Speleological Federation and serves as Training Officer and Search and Rescue Coordinator for the Cave Exploration Group of South Australia. Outside of research, he is an active caver who enjoys exploring, discovering, and mapping new cave systems. Caves are awesome!

Callum Bush (Master student)

Callum Bush is an amateur hiker and wildlife photographer originally from Western Australia who has visited almost 100 national and conservation parks in Australia in a (mostly unsuccessful) quest to photograph Australian fauna that all seem to be imbued with a natural aversion to being photographed or standing still. An affinity for nature led him to complete a degree in Marine and Wildlife Conservation, where he stepped back from the cute and fluffy, instead becoming more invested in the action-packed areas of statistics and large data set analyses. Callum now researches the unseen but omnipresent genetic mechanisms that can drive adaptation and regulation (including genetic editing/gene drives), ecosystem services, and brings attention to less “sexy” conservation priorities: Both native, threatened invertebrates that don’t inspire affection but nonetheless form a foundational layer of any ecosystem, and, invasive species such as shot-hole borer, fire ants, fruit fly, or pine scale. At the ISB lab he will be looking at the genetic structure of Pallidotettix nullarborensis populations, a species of cricket endemic to caves across the Nullarbor Plain. This research will help inform the conservation status of P. nullarborensis, understand dispersal capabilities of invertebrates between caves, and in doing so hopefully help mitigate any damage that may be done to the cave ecosystems due to industrial development along the Nullarbor Plain.