Tag: Japan

ESJ 2018 in Sapporo

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Several Arilab members attended the 65th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Japan in Sapporo, Hokkeido, from March 14th to march 18th. It was a great opportunity for students, postdocs, and staff scientists to present Arilab research to a broader Japanese audience. At the same time, it was a good occasion for networking, chatting about potential future collaborations, and learn more about the research done in other labs throughout Japan.

Spearheaded by Nick Friedman and supported by Nao Takashina and Francisco Hita Garcia our lab organized a successful English-speaking symposium with the title “Biodiversity: linking biogeographic pattern and process”.

Masashi Yoshimura also gave an interesting about the OKEON Churamori Project and Yuka Suzuki successfully presented her poster showing her PhD project.

We also enjoyed the local Hokkeido cuisine, especially a visit to the Sapporo Bier Garten!

OIST Science Challenge 2018: Measuring Biodiversity

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Every year OIST hosts the Science Challenge, which is organized by the Graduate School as an opportunity for Japanese undergraduate students to explore scientific career options. Over the course of a few days the students participate in a number of activities that focus on the diversity of scientific paths and introduce ways to develop the international communication skills necessary for success.

The Biodiversity and Biocomplexity Unit organized a hands-on activity for the 2018 science challenge. Twelve students signed up, making the “Measuring Biodiversity” activity the most popular at OIST for the second year in a row. The goal of the activity was to quantify the diversity of insects in a vial given a short period of time and no taxonomic expertise. This year’s students were really enthusiastic about using their observations to quantify biodiversity, and had some great ideas about how to do this at scale in the future.

Nick Friedman, Takuma Yoshida, Ayumi Inoguchi, Adam Khalife, and Georg Fischer helped out with the activity.

Prince Akishino Visits Arilab

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Image from QAB

On November 14, 2016, His Imperial Highness attended the Joint Meeting of the International Congress of Zoology and the Zoological Society of Japan and visited the OIST campus, including the Economo Lab. Evan gave an overview of our lab research, including ant phylogenies, GABI/antmaps.org, the OKEON Churamori project, studying ant morphology with micro-CT, invasive ants and ant projects in Madagascar. The Prince has a PhD in molecular phylogenetics (!), so he understands our research very well and asked terrific questions.

Several media outlets broadcasted the visit, including NHK, OTV and QAB.