Alastair M. Stuart

Professor Emeritus
astuart@bio.umass.edu

Education
B.Sc.(Hons), Glasgow, Scotland, 1953
Ph.D., Harvard, 1961

Postdoctoral
1963, Cambridge University, UK
1968-1969, CSIRO, Canberra, Australia
1975, Max Plank Institute, Seewiesen
1980 Smithsonian Trop. Research Inst., Panama
1986 University of Glasgow, Scotland.
1987 Kerala Forest Research Institute, India
1992 Albert Einstein Col. Medicine

Research Interests

Behavior and Physiology of Social Insects.
Research is focused on behavioral, physiological and cellular aspects of communication and caste development in termites (Isoptera). A colony of social insects exhibits a degree of organization matched only by human society. Such tasks as defence and food gathering are carried out in social insects by morphologically and behavioristically specialized individuals. The behavior involved is coordinated and regulated through chemical communication by pheromones and through auditory, visual and tactile signals. Current work centers on the physiological and cellular basis of such communication and caste development and social behavior in nearctic and tropical termites. The laboratory studies utilize available modern techniques including immunocytochemistry of insect organelles at the light and TEM level and are correlated with field studies on behavior and ecology carried out mainly in Central and North America.

Representative Publications

Stuart, A.M. 1990. Some functional and evolutionary aspects of mechanical and chemical communication. In Social Insects and the Environment, GK Veeresh, B Mallik and CA Viraktamath eds., Oxford & IBH, pp35-36.

Stuart, A.M. 1988. Preliminary studies on the significance of head-banging movements in termites with special reference to Zootermopsis angusticollis (Hagen), (Isoptera: Hodotermitidae). Sociobiology 14: 49-60.

Greenberg, S.A. and A.M. Stuart. 1982. Precocious reproductive development (neoteny) by larvae of a primitive termite Zootermopsis angusticollis (Hagen). Insectes Sociaux 29: 535-547.

Bradley, T., A.M Stuart and P. Satir. 1982. The ultrastructure of the larval Malpighian tubules of a saline water mosquito. Tissue and Cell 14: 759-773.

Stuart, A.M. 1981. The role of pheromones in the initiation of foraging, recruitment and defense by the soldier of a tropical termite Nasutitermes corniger (Motschulsky). Chem. Senses 6: 409-420.

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