Tag: ants

Takamine Ant Collection Donated to OIST

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Image attribution: OIST

Image attribution: OIST

Mr. Hidetsune Takamine is a well-known Okinawan ant expert who has been collecting ants in Okinawa for around 40 years. His collection includes 116 species, 30 of which are endemic to Okinawa.

On November 26, 2015, Mr. Takamine donated his ant collection to OIST at a handover ceremony that took place at the Biodiversity and Biocomplexity Unit and will be stored in the unit’s specimen shelf as the Takamine Collection.

Dr. Masashi Yoshimura and Prof. Evan Economo expressed their gratitude towards Mr. Takamine, emphasizing how much this donation would contribute to academic research and more specifically how it would improve the scientific research on Okinawan biodiversity and help us understand how the diversity of Okinawa fits into the broader picture.

 

 

Introducing AntMaps.org!

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After months of development by Evan, Julia Janicki, Benoit Guenard, Nitish Narula, and Matt Ziegler, we are very pleased to introduce AntMaps.orgScreen Shot 2015-07-10 at 3.50.19 PM! AntMaps is an interactive web framework for mapping ant species ranges and aggregate biodiversity patterns. In particular, AntMaps is built to visualize and interact with the GABI database, currently consisting 1.6 million records of ant data. GABI is, to our knowledge, the first comprehensive global biodiversity dataset for any insect group. We hope that by providing a gateway to GABI, AntMaps will be an efficient and useful tool for amateur and professional myrmecologists, and also help us root out problems with the database. We’d love to hear your feedback.

Samoa Collecting Trip

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In April, 2015, Eli and Cong made a two-week collecting trip to Samoa. One purpose was to look for two endemic species Pheidole aana and Pheidole atua, which was last collected in 1967 before this trip. They ended up finding Pheidole aana, along with four other endemic species among the 33 ant species collected during this trip. They also recorded two new genera from Samoa, Discothyrea and Proceratium. Moreover, they collected native forest species at an altitude as high as 1400 meters.

Samoa Collecting Trip  Samoa Collecting Trip

New Pheidole paper published

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Very happy to report the new paper on Pheidole from the lab, in collaboration with Lacey Knowles’ lab at U. Mich. We update the global phylogeny to around 300 species, and find some interesting relationships between the phylogenetic and macroecological structure of the genus. Also check out the story on the OIST website. This one has been a long time coming and a lot of work. Look for more work and bigger trees on Pheidole coming soon.  Pheidole_phylo

Children’s School of Science, August 2014

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Submitted by Yoshimura-san and Ogasawara-san

Onna-son and OIST organized a summer science school for children from the 18th to the 22nd of August, 2014. Members of Economo Unit participated and held a class for 1st to 3rd grade students from local schools.

The theme of the class was of course “The Ants!” Students enjoyed a science quiz about morphology and ecology of ants, and learned about this wonderful insect, which, although quite common and familiar, is actually very mysterious.

We started by demonstrating an experiment for the students where we fed colored honey to the Yellow Crazy ants. Soon after, the colors could been seen in the gasters of the ants. Then the students collected ants by themselves and observed them under the microscopes in search for answers to the quiz questions. By the end of the quiz, they were full of many new questions! They were amazed to find out that many different species, each with varying appearances and morphology, live under their feet.

We would like to thank the volunteer staff for their kind support!

「こどもかがく教室2014」が8月18～22日にかけて恩納村のふれあい体験センターで行われ、エコノモユニットのスタッフが小学１・２・３年生向けの、「沖縄の地上のいきものと自然」クラスの一環として1日授業を行ないました。テーマはもちろん「アリ」。子どもたちは、アリの特徴やその生活についてのクイズ大会を楽しみながら、それを通して、ありふれているけど実はとても不思議に満ちたアリの世界を学びました。

授業ではアシナガキアリに色のついたハチミツを与える実験をしたり、子どもたち自らアリを採集して顕微鏡で観察したり。実際の体験を通してクイズの答えを自分たちで見つけました。クイズが終わる頃には、子どもたちの頭のなかは新しい疑問でいっぱいになり、質問コーナーは大いに盛り上がりました。自分の身近なところでも、実は色々なアリたちが生活しているのだ、ということを学んでもらえたと思います。

最後に、授業を支援して下さったボランティアスタッフのみなさまに、熱く御礼を申し上げます。

More information about the event:

English|英語

Japanese|日本語

Photos from the event, courtesy OIST CPR Staff: