Zoe Bloesch

I am originally from Brisbane and I did my undergrad in Arts and Science at the University of Queensland. I moved to Cairns to do my honours project on fern evolution and hybridisation at James Cook University before I ended up in Sydney. I love growing veggies, camping and hiking.

Project: Coevolution of carnivorous plants and kleptoparasitic bugs

Supervised by: Gerry Cassis, Dan Murphy, Dieter Hochuli

Project Description: I am studying the evolutionary ecology of a curious interaction between the carnivorous sundew plant and the sundew bug, who lives on the plant and steals its prey from it. I have done extensive fieldwork on the Australian east coast collecting DNA samples to construct a comparative phylogeography, which may show whether cospeciation is occurring between the bug and the plant. I am also analysing colour matching between the bug and plant, compiling natural history observations and conducting experimentation to understand more about this interaction.