AOTWP BLOG |
AOTWP BLOG |
After a couple years of delay due to the pandemic, August 2022 marks the 20th Ant Course session to date. This year it is hosted at the Cuc Phuong National Park (Vườn Quốc Gia Cúc Phương) in Vietnam. Participants and instructors from around the globe gather to learn, collaboration, and ask questions in the field of Myrmecology. These researches come from various backgrounds and places, but are united in their interest and curiosity about ants. Meet the people of Ant Course 2022: Vietnam Dr. Brian Fisher is an Ant Course instructor. He scientist, speaker and teacher with a passion for ants. His vast array of work across the globe addresses crucial questions about ant taxonomy, biodiversity, and conservation. Dr. Micheal Branstetter is an Ant Course Instructor. He is a Research Entomologist with USDA, Agricultural Research Service. He specializes in pollinating insects at Utah State University. Dr. Bonnie Blaimer is one of the Ant Course instructors. She is a research scientist at the Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery and the Scientific Head for the Hymenoptera collection. Her interests lie in evolution, community ecology, biogeography and ant systematics. Dr. Phil Ward is an Ant Course instructor. He is an entomology professor at the University of California Davis. He specializes in systematics, biogeography and evolution of ants, ant-plant mutualisms, and phylogeny and speciation. Dr. An Dang is one of the Ant Course instructors. He is a researcher in the Department of Soil Ecology at Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. Andrea Lucky is an AntCourse instructor and evolutionary biologist and biodiversity scientist with a focus on insects and invasion. Her training is specifically in the evolution of ants. Dr. John Longino is an Ant Course instructor. He has focused much of his work on the taxonomy of neotropical ants and ecological patterns of ant diversity, as well as studies of biodiversity inventory methodology and regional faunistic work in Costa Rica. Wendy Wang is an Ant Course Instructor and a curator for the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum in Singapore. She has experience and interest in Ant Taxonomy & Systematics, Insect Ecology & Evolution. Dr Flavia Esteves is an AntCourse instructor and an ant taxonomist that loves the rainforests and the ants of Southeast Asia. Zachary Griebenow is a PhD student from USA. His research is focused upon a systematic revision of the ant subfamily Leptanillinae at the generic level and lower, based upon male morphological data. Adrian Richter is an Ant Morphology PhD student from Germany. He is currently investigating the evolution of head morphology across the total clade of the Formicidae. Eva Colberg is a PhD student studying how prescribed burning affects ants' seed-dispersing behavior. In the future, she plans to use ants as bioindicators to compare the effects of fire on myrmecochory. Felipe Pereira da Rocha is a PhD student studying in Hong Kong. He studies organismal and community ecology of invasive ants in Southeast Asia. Aline Machado de Oliveira is a research assistant at the University of Hong Kong. For her Vietnam is particularly interesting for her ongoing research as she just moved from South America to Asia, and recently started a project on Southern Chinese ants. Chloe Jelley is a PhD student studying the evolutionary, and ecological consequences, of varying levels of aggression across ant lineages. Max Tercel's PhD research focuses on using DNA metabarcoding to investigate the diet of introduced ants on Round Island, Mauritius. Marie-Pierre Meurville is a grad student from France studying evolution of stomodeal trophallaxis in ants using machine learning. Norina Vicente is researching the diversity and abundance of Formicidae in Gorongosa National Park. She manages the zoological collection, biodiversity data entry, specimens' digital imaging, insect identification, maintenance and organization of collection and survey equipment. Jake Stone is a third year PhD student at the University of Cambridge, researching smallholder oil palm plantation management and its impact on ant populations in Indonesia and Malaysia. Elaine Tan is a PhD student, investigating colony founding behaviors local temperate ant species.They want to examine the within-colony and inter-colony interactions that shape the ant population structure. Shafia Zahra is a grad student investigating the presence of reverse Janzen Connell effect through ant-plants interaction. Frederik De Wint is a PhD student exploring whether entomopathogenic fungi are able to drive negative density dependence and hence generate and maintain arthropod diversity. Leo Ohyama is a PhD candidate at the University of Florida. He studies how different facets of biodiversity patterns and processes shift from regional (Florida) to global scales. Snigdha Mayenkar is a PhD. researcher from the University of Goa- India. She is studying Ant-fungi interactions and how fungi may have contributed to the ecological success of ants. Yannick Juvé is a Ph.D. student at the University of Montpellier, in France. He is assessing the prevalence of a particular reproductive system, called social hybridogenesis, among Messor ant genera and Stenammini tribe. Davide Bergamaschi's research revolves around the ecology and evolution of ants and their parasites beetles of the genus Paussus from Madagascar with an emphasis on the role of the microbiome. Lazzat Aibekova is studying the modifications in the skeletomuscular system of mesosoma of ants across the phylogeny. Specifically, studying configurations in ants to perform jumping and other types of locomotion. Yvonne Koid Qian Qun's research looks at the species co-occurrence patterns of canopy and leaf litter ant assemblages and assessing how biotic and abiotic environmental variables affect their community structure. Orli Snir's research is about social interactions and evolution of social signals and developmental plasticity. In O. biroi, she is examining the long term implications of larvae consuming it on developmental trajectories and phenotypic variability in the adult stage. Abusisiwe Ndaba's research works towards creating an identification key of the ant genus Anoplolepis, it’s biogeography and presence of an invasive species (Anoplolepis gracilipes) in Southern Africa. Jonathan Romiguier's research interests focus on links between species ecology and molecular evolution. He studies genome evolution of species with a eusocial lifestyle or atypical reproductive systems. His main model species is the barbarian harvester ant Messor barbarus. |
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September 2023
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