Profile
Alex Dye
My CV
-
Education:
I went to Sherrier Primary school in Leicestershire. I then went on to Lutterworth High School, and then Lutterworth College for my GCSE’s and A levels.
After that, I went to study Biology at the University of Derby, before deciding I loved insects and continuing my education to study a masters degree in insects at Harper Adams University.
-
Qualifications:
I have 9 GCSE’s, including Maths, English, two Sciences, ICT, Design & Technology, History and Geography.
I have three A Levels, in Biology, Psychology and English Language.
I have a Biology degree and a masters degree in Entomology.
-
Work History:
Whilst studying my A levels I worked as a cleaner at a local high school after school hours four days a week.
I also worked as a removal man during summer holidays from University.
I worked once again as a cleaner for several local businesses as I saved up money to study my masters degree.
During my masters degree, I worked on the tills at a Waitrose near my University. -
Current Job:
I am a Field Entomologist at Rothamsted Research!
-
About Me:
I am an entomologist (an insect scientist) with a passion for all insect life, and at the moment I’m a big fan of flies and wasps (aren’t we all?)
I also co-host a science podcast with friends, The Science of Feeding the World! -
Read more
My name is Alex Dye, and I have spent much of my life rooting around for insects and bugs. My pronouns are he/him.
I live in Harpenden with my girlfriend and our rapidly growing collection of vinyl records (I have a problem). I’m a huge music fan and regularly attend gigs and concerts around the country. My current favourite artists are King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Open Mike Eagle, Run the Jewels and Denzel Curry.
I recently got into Marmite cashew nuts, and have a weakness for chocolate. I enjoy playing video games, and have spent some of my free time in lockdown completing Persona 5 Royal and Pokémon. I’m also a huge superhero nerd, and regularly dress up as Spider-Man or Thor for parties or just because I can.
-
Read more
I work with the Insect Pest team at Rothamsted Research. I work mostly with aphid and beetle pests, which cause problems for oilseed and wheat crops – these provide our cooking oils, cereals and bread. My work has involved searching for and collecting cabbage stem flea beetles in the field and studying their behaviour in the laboratory. Each summer, myself and my fellow scientists head out to the Rothamsted farm during the harvest to collect flea beetles as the oilseed is funnelled into a trailer – it’s like a messy, funny-smelling ball pit.
I also work with chemical smells, looking at whether or not plants give off certain chemical messages when they are fed upon by herbivores, such as aphids. My hope is that we can find different chemical smells can help farmers find out which pests are on their crops, meaning they can be more careful about how they deal with these insect pests, like this plant disease carrying aphid.
I also work with the Rothamsted Insect Survey, which use giant suction traps (which work like giant vacuum cleaners sucking insects from the sky as they fly past) to keep an eye on insect flights and migration events. This allows us to predict when and where there will be migrations of pest insects, allowing farmers to know when and if they’ll need to expect any arrivals.
This work has also lead to developing lasers capable of spotting insects in flight, and seeing if I can get those lasers to tell me exactly which species of insect has just flown through the beam. If I can get this to work, we may be able to use these in the fields to help farmers know exactly which insect pests they have on their crops.
My work with the Insect Survey has taken me to Belfast to assemble a trap, and in 2019 I was given an amazing opportunity to travel to Kenya to set up a trap system for the fall armyworm, a big maize pest. This was a fantastic chance to meet farmers out there, see some amazing African insects and set up a new trap network for helping the local farmers keep track of this pest.
-
My Typical Day:
I start my day with a walk around some of our insect traps on the farm, before moving into the laboratory. Here, I will try to find out if insects eating plants cause the plants to give off smells to help other plants grow stronger!
After this, I will go and make sure the insects I have been taking care of are happy and healthy by giving them plenty of food and water.
In the afternoons I might go out to the farm and run tests in some of the fields to see which insect pests are present and whether or not I can attract them to certain parts of the fields!
I will then grab a few insects to test out some lasers I’ve been working on, seeing if the lasers can spot the insects as they fly past. -
Read more
My first job of a day is normally to check the Insect Survey traps onsite at Rothamsted. Samples are collected daily, so we know which insects have been flying for the past 24 hours. The samples are collected by these giant vacuum cleaners and then I bring them to the survey lab, where myself and a team of experts will figure out which insects are in the skies at the moment. Once we’re done, we can send this information out to farmers, who can use this to keep an eye out for bad insects who may be flying towards their crops.
After this, I will check on the insects I am in charge of. I look after aphids (a little green insect) mostly, and have set up a few different colonies of them. This means I will have a fresh supply of aphids to work on for the whole year, I just need to make sure they are happy and healthy. I can then use these aphids for an experiment where they will be placed onto plant leaves and the plants will then be placed into glass jars so we can suck the air inside up, and find out if the plants are giving off smells to warn other plants about these pests. I think the plant might give off these smells in an attempt to make its friends stronger – in the same way that if you knew someone was about to bump into you and someone warned you, you would be able to prepare and protect yourself!
In the afternoon, I might go to the field to make sure my experiments are working. One of these experiments had little bags of plants (which looked like Smurfs when out in the field) used to attract flea beetles (shiny black beetles which can jump a long way) by using their own attractive smells to draw them in. We even used some chemicals to create fake versions of their smells, to see if we could even trick them into thinking they could smell another beetle!
I tend to find a lot of cool insects throughout the day, and will often spend some time playing with anything that I’ve found, such as this beautiful lesser stag beetle I kept as a pet for a short while last year!
-
My Interview
-
How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Mad Insect Man
What did you want to be after you left school?
I wanted to work on people's brains for a while, but I couldn't stop myself from being distracted by whatever was buzzing around.
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Not really, though I did often get told off for bringing Pokémon toys and cards into school when I was younger
Who is your favourite singer or band?
My favourite band are King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, a strange rock band from Australia
What's your favourite food?
Pizza! But curry is a close second
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
To be able to play piano, to have a pet red panda and to be able to eat as much chocolate as I wanted without getting fat
Tell us a joke.
Why didn't Elsa have a balloon? She let it go!
-