Iona Cunningham-Eurich

Position: PhD Student

Project: Diversity, distributions and ecology of parasitoid wasps

Research Interests:

I’m interested in finding better ways to monitor understudied insects such as parasitoid wasps, which comprise vital components of ecosystems yet remain vastly understudied. My PhD has focused on collecting and mapping parasitoid wasps in the UK, with the help of moth enthusiasts.
I’m also working on understanding the evolution of generalism and specialism in parasitoid wasps, and the evolution of host range (i.e. parasitoid prey) and how this impacts speciation.

Previously, I completed my MSci at UCL under the supervision of Seirian Sumner and Jinliang Wang (ZSL), looking at the population genetic structure of the common yellowjacket, Vespula vulgaris, using citizen science samples from the Big Wasp Survey collected across the UK.

Background

March 2025 – May 2025: POST Fellow (Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology), researching and writing a POSTnote on Regenerative Agriculture
Dec 2024 – Feb 2025: Research Assistant on a UKRI Innovate UK project on crop pest biocontrol using natural enemies, UCL
2021–present: PhD Candidate, Natural History Museum & University College London, NERC DTP Cohort 8
2016–2020: MSci Zoology, University College London

Contact: iona.cunningham-eurich.16@ucl.ac.uk / iona.cunningham-eurich@nhm.ac.uk

Publications

Cunningham-Eurich, I., Wentworth, J. (2025) POSTnote: Regenerative Agriculture. UK Parliament POST. doi: 10.58248/PN748
Broad, G., Cunningham-Eurich, I. (2024) The genome sequence of a braconid wasp, Aleiodes testaceus (Telenga, 1941). Wellcome Open Research, 9, 408. doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.22738.1
Hasenjager, M.J., Hoppitt, W., Cunningham-Eurich, I., Franks, V.R., & Leadbeater, E. (2024) Coupled information networks drive honeybee (Apis mellifera) collective foraging. Journal of Animal Ecology, 93, 71–82. doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.14029
Cunningham-Eurich, I., Kontou, D., Yordanova, M., Maeda-Obregon, A., Favreau, E., Wang, J. et al. (2023) Using citizen science data to assess the population genetic structure of the common yellowjacket wasp, Vespula vulgaris. Insect Molecular Biology, 32(6), 634–647. doi: 10.1111/imb.12862