Category: General
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Common Ants in Athens, GA
During my time in Athens, Georgia, I had the chance to observe and interact with several local and invasive ant species. Below is a collection of short videos documenting some of these encounters—ranging from field observations to close-up behavior clips.
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Breeding Systems of Fire Ants
I’m happy to share a new preprint on the breeding systems of fire ants >>> https://www.authorea.com/users/903412/articles/1278388-reproductive-competition-in-multiple-queen-fire-ant-colonies-insights-from-analyses-of-breeding-systems Understanding social group formation and structure is vital for understanding social evolution. The number of breeding individuals (breeders), their relatedness, and how reproduction is shared among the breeders comprise the “breeding system” of a species. This project started as…
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a JEB cover article
I contributed a cover image! Although I am not on the paper: https://academic.oup.com/jeb/article-abstract/38/3/333/7927855?redirectedFrom=fulltext Here is a quick view: Understanding how flexible traits (plasticity) and stable genetic differences (balanced polymorphisms) evolve is a major question in biology. Fire ant gynes (pre-reproductive queens) are a great system to study this because they show both genetic and environmental…
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Mating flight short film
Dr. Brendan Hunt suggested to me that I should videotape the mating flight behavior of fire ants since there are no good visual materials of it online. So I took out my camera on a collecting trip last year and made this short video documentary. Hope you like it! — Text in the video —…
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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 2024. 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 & genomics…
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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…
Horace Zeng 