Category Archives: News

November updates and a little break…

November has been a great month so far. My first dissertation chapter was accepted in Ecology, we have a different paper that just came back with positive reviews, and a third ant taxonomy/species distribution paper is also in review. I have been plugging away at the flood manuscript with Mike and Diane and hope to submitContinue reading “November updates and a little break…”

NEW PAPER OUT! From cryptic herbivore to predator: stable isotopes reveal consistent variability in trophic levels in an ant population

We are incredibly excited to announce that our work on fire ants and isotopes has just been accepted in Ecology! The work primarily revolves around understanding trophic variation across a population of one of the model organisms of myrmecology: the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta. Essentially, we are looking at where you rank in aContinue reading “NEW PAPER OUT! From cryptic herbivore to predator: stable isotopes reveal consistent variability in trophic levels in an ant population”

The Ants of Oklahoma: a collaborative project

Knowing your study organism(s) is one of the most important things for an ecologist as it can lead to amazing insights and future ideas about how the natural world works. For me, those study organisms are the ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). With help from collaborators and friends, we have started to publish exciting, but relatively small,Continue reading “The Ants of Oklahoma: a collaborative project”

September Musings – Conferences, Experiments, Papers, and more…

The month of August was fantastic. Mike and I reworked the isotope manuscript. I found some wonderfully cool ants at the University of Oklahoma Biological Station. And I made headway on my massive experiment for my dissertation. All in all, a good month. September is now here and I think it may be the bestContinue reading “September Musings – Conferences, Experiments, Papers, and more…”

NEW PAPER OUT! A checklist and assemblage comparison of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma

I am excited to announce our first paper of 2016! This was a really fun project that we worked on in the latter half of 2015 with new county and state records for a number of ant species. We also found interesting differences in patterns of local diversity between habitat types. We hope to follow this work upContinue reading “NEW PAPER OUT! A checklist and assemblage comparison of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma”

Corrie Moreau visits Oklahoma

Every year the graduate students in the Biology department at the University of Oklahoma get to nominate a seminar speaker that they would like to host. This year, I had the pleasure of hosting Corrie Moreau and it was awesome! Corrie is a evolutionary biologist with interests in the origin, evolution, and adaptation of species and maintenanceContinue reading “Corrie Moreau visits Oklahoma”

Website Under Construction and New Paper Accepted

Off for break for a few weeks but I will be working on the research section of the website. The first draft of my dissertation chapter on fire ants and isotopes is finished and so begins the next one. Also, Diane and I just had another paper accepted in the Southwestern Naturalist about our Pseudomyrmex pallidus findContinue reading “Website Under Construction and New Paper Accepted”