Category: Blog
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Collecting Temnothorax
Dr. TAKAO SASAKI [ sasakilab.ecology.uga.edu ] recently joined UGA department of ecology, started a lab to study collective animal behavior! To help him collect study organism Temnothorax ants, we went up to Northern GA. (With the help of Dr. Doug Booher, who is an ant taxonomy expert.) Looking for rotten nuts around trees not too…
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Ant labs of NA
Who is studying social evolution of ants in America? (Mostly ant people here. Bee, wasp people are just too much… maybe add them later). (Featured Image credit: Alex Wild) Order randomly. Updated in 2018. ROSS Lab, U Georgia http://www.caes.uga.edu/departments/entomology/people/faculty/ken-ross.html Social polymorphism, population genetics, chemical communication in fire ants HUNT Lab, U Georgia http://www.huntlab.uga.edu/index.html Bioinformatic &…
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Ross lab roadmap
History of fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) research by Ross lab and collaborators. Summary slides © Dr. Kenneth Ross Ross and Fletcher (1985): Use allozyme at two loci for genetic structure. Foundress M queens singly inseminated. Average relatedness among female nestmates of M is 0.714, ~not different from 0.75. P queens also singly inseminated, not more…
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The wasps around us
In this past summer, I was lucky enough to discover and observe quite a few Hymenopteran species living in and around the old house in north Athens. Giant resin bee, Megachile sculpturalis (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) Found at the back of the house. Mason wasp, Parancistrocerus fulvipes. Found on the outlet on the patio. Mason wasp Eumenes fraternus (suspected). Found…
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The Queens
What is more fun for an ant lover to observe the starting of a super organism? I remember having my first pet ant colony back in the second year of high school. Observing development of the colony, the transition of different life stages, the complex social behavior, that planted my passion for social insects. In…
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Carolina wren journal
So I have been a graduate student here at UGA for almost a year now. I had no idea what being a Ph.D. student mean when I joined the program. Every time when I think about it, I just feel lucky that Dr. Ross would take me on. At first, it felt largely like…
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Summer of 2016 –
Lying on the bed last night at my home, I wasn’t able to fall asleep in a short time. I always have problems sleeping — if I sleep like a baby every day I would not need to do so much thinking and writing. This summer I have been doing so much traveling and seeing…
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Iron teeth
I spent the whole night trying to write up a lab report for insect physiology class at UIUC on a project using environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM). I was not able to finish the paper with high quality but our teacher Dr. Marianne Alleyne was nice enough to give two more days. Regardless, let me share…
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Rearing Manduca
My life goal is quite clear: inspire more people to appreciate and conserve nature. Even though I still don’t know how to achieve it, I decided to be an ecologist/entomologist first. Now that I have decided to be an entomologist, I am going to start writing about my research and life. I recognize that people…
Horace Zeng 