Rate My Professor Etya Amsalem

Etya Amsalem is an Associate Professor of Entomology at Pennsylvania State University, where she joined as an Assistant Professor in 2016 and was promoted in 2022. She earned her B.Sc. in Medical and Life Sciences from Tel Aviv University in 2004, M.Sc. in Zoology in 2007, and Ph.D. in Zoology in 2011, all from the same institution. Following her doctorate, she conducted postdoctoral research at Tel Aviv University from 2011 to 2012, received a BARD Postdoctoral Scholarship in the Grozinger Lab at Penn State from 2012 to 2015, and served as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Haifa in 2016. Additionally, she holds a visiting professor position at Tel Aviv University. Amsalem is affiliated with the Center for Pollinator Research, Center for Chemical Ecology, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, and Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Biosciences program. Her expertise spans social behavior, chemical ecology, pollinator health, physiology, genetics, and bees within the biological sciences.

The research in Amsalem's lab investigates insect social behavior and pollinator health through an integrative approach utilizing chemical ecology, physiology, genetics, and genomics. Specific topics include pheromones and hormones regulating reproduction, sexual production, and social behavior in insect societies; genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying pheromone production, perception, and social organization; the evolution of reproductive signaling; genetic and physiological factors enabling successful diapause in bumble bee queens; the impact of pesticides, pathogens, and diet on bee behavior, mating, and development; and larva development, caste determination in bumble bees, and the evolution of castes in social insects. She teaches courses such as ENT 202: Insect Connections: Insects, Globalization and Sustainability; ENT 484: Insect Behavior; and ENT 530: Supervised Mentoring for Graduate Students. Key publications include "Gyne production is regulated by the brood in a social bee (Bombus impatiens)" (Royal Society Open Science, 2025), "Do bumble bees make optimal nutritional choices?" (Journal of Insect Physiology, 2025), "Sublethal pesticide exposure decreases mating and disrupts chemical signaling in a beneficial pollinator" (Science of the Total Environment, 2025), "The Evolution of Queen Pheromone Production and Detection in the Reproductive Division of Labor in Social Insects" (Annual Review of Entomology, 2025), "Hormetic response to pesticides in diapausing bees" (Biology Letters, 2025), and "Post-transcriptional regulation of Dufour’s gland reproductive signals in bumble bees" (BMC Genomics, 2024).