The field of social wound care derives from social immunity, focusing on how social insects take care of injured individuals in the colony. These injuries can be cut off extermities or other animals clinging on to the body.

We want to better understand the evolutionary processes leading to rescue and social wound care behaviour and to identify promising new wound treatment protocols, novel antimicrobial compounds and wound healing mechanisms.

We conduct behavioural analyses in the field and lab on different species and populations of ants, conducting chemical analyses of pheromones and antimicrobial compounds used during wound care and create mathematical models to identify the drivers for the evolution of wound care behaviour.