biodiversity – Page 4

Rare ant found in OKEON sample

Posted on October 31, 2016 by ArilabAdmin

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A rarely-collected ant species, Protanilla lini, has been identified from a SLAM trap sample that was collected from Hentona High School (site04) between September and October last year. Protanilla lini belongs to the subfamily Leptanillinae. All members of the family are small, subterranean and often blind ants that are very rarely collected. We know very little about their biology, but we believe they are predators of larger prey such as centipedes or earthworms. It is likely that they perform some form of “dracula ant feeding behavior”, where the adults hunt large prey, but instead of feeding on it themselves they take their larvae to the prey, the adults then drink the haemolymph (or “blood”) of the larvae without causing any physical damage.

Distribution of Protanilla lini, image from antmaps.org

This species has been recorded only in Taiwan and Okinawa. It has been collected only once before in Okinawa, and a couple of times in Taiwan.

The information and the specimen images were provided by our staff scientist Paco Hita Garcia.

Soundscape of Okinawa during Obon

Posted on October 24, 2016 by ArilabAdmin

On top of SLAM traps that collect arthropod samples and weather stations that record physical parameter data, acoustic traps that gather sound data are also set up at various OKEON field sites. The soundscape of the sites differ based on their habitats and their proximity to urban areas, as illustrated by the sounds collected during the period of Obon in Okinawa.

Obon is a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of one’s ancestors. During Obon, Bon dance (bon odori) is performed to welcome the spirits of the dead. The bon dance performed in Okinawa is known as eisa. Across different OKEON sites we can hear different eisa dances with different species either in the foreground or the background. For example, in Nago the eisa dance is in the background, with sounds of many cricket species (Hexacentrus unicolor, Cardiodactylus guttulus, Ornebius kanetaki, Ornebius longipennis) in the foreground while in Nakagusuku the eisa song is in the foreground. By contrast, given its well-preserved continuous forests far from civilization, the soundscape of Yanbaru consists only of natural sounds.

Below are the soundscapes of four different OKEON sites during Obon as well as part of their spectrograms:

nago

Soundscape of Nago on the night of Obon, recorded from Nago Castle Park

Link to sound here

nakagusuku

Soundscape of Nakagusuku on the night of Obon, recorded at Nakagusuku Park

Link to sound here

sueyoshi

Soundscape of Naha on the night of Obon, recorded from Sueyoshi Park.

Link to sound here

yanbaru

Yanbaru Forest on the night of Obon, recorded at the Yanbaru Discovery Forest Park.

Link to sound here

Sound data contributed by our Post-Doctoral researcher Nicholas Friedman.

OKEON Churamori Project presented at International Congress of Entomology 2016

Posted on October 19, 2016 by ArilabAdmin

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The nearly one-week long XXV International Congress of Entomology, under the theme Entomology without Borders, took place in Orlando this year from September 25-30. It brought together the largest delegation of scientists and experts in the history of the discipline with over 7000 participants and over 2000 talks, with topics ranging from biodiversity conservation to ecology and evolution to science communication.

Yoshi, a staff scientist of arilab and the coordinator of the OKEON project, represented the rest of the OKEON team at the conference by presenting a poster on the project. The poster, titled OKEON Chura-mori Project: A new environmental monitoring project in Okinawa, Japan , introduced the project and described its various components, including GIS, field network, genomics pipeline, as well as emphasized its collaborative nature by outlining the various partners of the project.

You can see the original poster here.

Highlights from the International Congress of Entomology in Orlando

Posted on October 12, 2016 by ArilabAdmin

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The nearly one-week long XXV International Congress of Entomology, under the theme Entomology without Borders, took place in Orlando this year from September 25-30. It brought together the largest delegation of scientists and experts in the history of the discipline with over 7000 participants and over 2000 talks, with topics ranging from biodiversity and conservation to ecology and evolution to medical entomology to taxonomy to IPM to science communication.

Various members of our lab participated in this conference by either giving a talk or presenting a poster, as listed below:
Evan Economo (Talk) Reconciling global macroecological pattern and macroevolutionary processes in ant biodiversity.
Paco Hita Garcia (Talk) Evolution, biogeography, and diversification of the genus Terataner.
Julia Janicki (Talk) antmaps.org: An interactive client-server mapping application for visualizing the ants of the world.
Cong Liu (Talk) Reorganization of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic ant biodiversity after conversion to rubber plantation.
Eli Sarnat (Talk) Applied systematics of Pheidole: An interactive review of the world’s most invasive ant lineage.
Masashi Yoshimura (Poster) OKEON Chura-mori Project: A new environmental monitoring project in Okinawa, Japan

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Symposia on ants, phylogenetic methods, biodiversity and taxonomy were popular among the myrmecologists in our lab. Other symposia that were very interesting included one on weevils, another on science communication, and one on the use of biological specimen data.

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How can OIST’s OKEON project collaborate with Okinawan society so that both benefit in some way?

Posted on September 5, 2016 by ArilabAdmin

While there are many different ways to answer this question, one important collaboration is with high schools in Okinawa. OKEON Chura-mori Project has been developing a new model of high school – university collaboration which benefits students, teachers and researchers alike.

For the past year, OKEON has worked with Futenma, Kyuyou, Kaiho and Hentona High Schools. Each school has collaborated with OKEON in slightly different ways, but students have primarily focused on ants found in their local area as the material of their school research activities. Planning and conducting scientific research is often beyond school curriculums, so in order for the high schools to take part, OKEON project leaders Yoshi and Masako created a training programme for high school teachers.

The programme involves lectures, and a course for planning research, collecting, sorting, mounting and identifying ants.

By taking part, teachers can gain the skills and know-how to create their own research programmes using data from the OKEON project. For Kawabata-sensei, his study of ants during his university years led him to have a personal interest in revisiting the laboratory. Takara-sensei did not research biodiversity at university, but having done Time-Unit Sampling at his school for a year before taking part in the programme, his ability to identify species is already extremely high. Both teachers spoke about how they were looking forward to working with their students to come up with a research plan using their new skills based on current research. Their goals included wanting to encourage students to develop their interest in science and research, but also to create a knowledge network between teachers which exchanges information, and has access to but is not dependent on a university faculty.

The high school teachers trained by OIST will have the skills and know-how to implement environmental monitoring activities and research, and specialist biodiversity data collection. These skills will in turn be passed down to the next generation of high school students.

Once a full cycle has been completed (the student’s research is generally for a year), teachers and students can develop and improve their research methods, thereby improving the scientific capacity of the entire community. Because each high school will have unique ways of researching and contributing to OKEON, as well as different goals, there is scope for a self-sustaining network to evolve where teachers and students can share research methods and data.

This high school teacher training programme is valuable to OIST and OKEON for two main reasons. The first is that there are enormous amounts of data being generated through OKEON, and the sampling system is currently focused on winged insects. Students will be able to focus on worker ants in their local area, generating data which can become the basis for further research at OIST.

The second reason is that this programme is a way to contribute to the sustainability of Okinawan society in the broadest sense possible. Through the training of high school teachers, OIST and OKEON can contribute to education in Okinawa. At Hentona High School, for example, there are specific classes pertaining to the environment, within which this research can become an important component.

Students can take the specialist research skills they learn into their further study, perhaps even coming back to OIST to work with OKEON data. OIST can play an important role in allowing a strong research community in Okinawa to flourish, which will have the capacity not only to understand but to appreciate and protect the biodiversity of the island.

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