Biodiversity & Biocomplexity Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology Graduate University
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.
Benoit, Cong, and Benjamin made a great discovery on their trip to China, the first workers of one of the rarest ant genera in the world, Bannapone! The genus had previously only been known from a queen collected about 15 years ago. Our paper describes the worker of a different species of the genus.
See the paper here: http://biotaxa.org/Zootaxa/article/view/zootaxa.3734.3.6
and news article here:
Last week, from August 12th to the 16th, the children of Onna-son and surroundings had the chance to have an army of scientists from OIST teaching them about SCIENCE! This annual event, called the School of Science, became in spite of its young age an expected tradition for the local kids.
Therefore the Biodiversity and Biocomplexity unit had to be present! On Monday and Tuesday, 27 kids aged from 7 to 9 years old had the opportunity to learn more about arthropods living in Okinawa. During these two days, kids learned about the incredible diversity and importance of insects in terrestrial ecosystems. A brief lecture was proposed to them, quickly followed by field work! There, the young entomologists collected several species of spiders, ants, grasshoppers (quite diverse around the classroom), butterflies, ladybeetle, Hemipterans, and even a praying mantis!
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Benoit, Benjamin and Cong have come back from China and the OIST website interviewed them. To learn more about how ants are collected in the field and see some pictures of the trip, read this detailed report entitled Behind the Scenes in Ant Research.
Benoit, Cong, and Benjamin are in Xishuangbanna, China collecting ants in different habitats. Sounds like they are having a good time and have already found a bunch of cool species. I am extremely jealous. More from them soon.
