Climate change in the courtroom and on the runway

Researchers at QMUL are working on a BFTT project with a multi-award winning luxury brand ‘Elvis & Kresse’ to drive forward sustainable innovation within UK fashion industry. The project aims to develop a low cost technology which is open access and can be easily copied by others to recycle littered aluminium (Al) cans using sustainable clean energy. Meanwhile, high value added metal fixtures, such as buckles and decorations, will be made from recycled Al cans. This innovative project will provide a ‘green’ solution for recycling the millions of Al cans that litter UK and the world.

Ants live in “superorganismal” societies where the individual ants are parts of a greater whole. The 20000 species of ants are highly diverse, with tremendous variation in morphologies and society organisations. These societies can include 15 to millions individuals, and they have long evolved complex behaviors including farming, slave-making, queen selection through execution, combat rituals, and preventative self-sacrifice. I will highlight some of this diversity, and show how we use modern genomics and bioinformatics tools to understand how complex social behaviours function and evolved.