September 2025: Dr Arun Prakash, a Darwin Trust PhD student, has been retrospectively awarded the prestigious award from the Royal Entomological Society for his 2021 thesis ''Immune Regulation Of Disease Tolerance And Immune Priming In Drosophila'. Arun Prakash winner of the Alfred Russel Wallace Award 2021. Arun carried out his PhD in Pedro Vale’s lab in the School of Biological Sciences. His work investigated how fruit flies regulate disease tolerance and immune priming, uncovering mechanisms by which innate immune pathways limit damage and prepare hosts for future infections. I’m honored to receive the Alfred Wallace Award. My PhD asked a simple but also broad question: despite evolving alongside pathogens for millions of years, why do some individuals withstand infection while others succumb to the same pathogen? To answer this, I turned to the genetic power of Drosophila, which allowed me to dissect how survival depends not only on eliminating pathogens but also on how innate immune pathways limit damage and prepare the host for future challenges. This work showed me that immunity isn’t just about killing pathogens – it’s about balance, memory, and tolerance. I’m now excited to carry these ideas forward into applied systems with broader implications for health and disease. Dr Arun Prakash Recipient, 2021 Alfred Wallace Award Ecology and evolution of infection in insects The overall aim of the Vale Lab is to understand how individual-level host heterogeneity scales up to population level disease outcomes.Using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as an established model of infection, immunity and behaviour, they take an experimental approach to investigate the causes of individual heterogeneity in immune responses, life-history traits and social behaviours and the consequences of heterogeneity for how pathogens might spread and evolve. Arun's work in Drosophila melanogaster provided much needed mechanistic insight into disease tolerance and into how immune priming impacts pathogen transmission.Since completing his PhD, Arun has undertaken postdoctoral work with Ann Tate at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, studying host–parasite coevolution in flour beetles. He is now a Research Associate at Michigan State University, where he studies host–pathogen interactions in mosquitoes, focusing on how microbes and symbionts shape immunity and vector competence. Arun's major scientific contribution was demonstrating the role of negative immune regulators and mechanisms of tissues damage signaling and repair in the ability of flies to prime their immune responses and to tolerate infection by bacterial pathogens. In addition, Arun also contributed to work showing that immune reposnses become less specific with aging; and that some mitochondrial variants confer increased disease tolerance of infection. Dr Pedro Vale Senior Lecturer, School of Biological Sciences About the award The Alfred Russel Wallace Award is named after the naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator who independently from Charles Darwin, conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection. He was considered the 19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species, and is sometimes called the "father of biogeography".This award is made annually by the Royal Entomological Society to a post-graduate student whose PhD has made a significant contribution to the science of entomology, and whose work is regarded as outstanding by their supervisor. Related links The Vale LabDr Arun PrakashRoyal Entomological SocietyAlfred Russel Wallace website Publication date 27 Aug, 2025
