27/2/2024 Phil and Petr lead study that reanalyzed the old dataset on canopy ants from Wanang forest in Papua New Guinea using phylogenetic and functinal diversity approaches. Surprisingly, the study contradicts the previous findings on declines of taxonomic diversity from primary to secondary forest, and rather shows that functional diversity of tree-dwelling ants is increased – possibly due to the human-disturbance – in the young secondary forest.

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12/8/2022 Petr leads article about enigmatic ant genus Overbeckia and Camponotini evolution in Invertebrate Systematics, with accompanied blog in Myrmecological News 

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18/8/2020 Ondrej Mottl publishes his study on cross-continental comparison of insect guild abundances from our “felled-plot” projects in Ecology Letters. Big congrats! We did not found evidence for bottom down effects of ants and spiders on the herbivores in the tree canopies. Rather resources play the role for all arthropods.

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12/6/2020 Jiri Tuma successfully defended his thesis “The effect of tropical land use change on soil-dwelling ants and termites, their interaction and on ecosystem processes” Congratulations! Jiri has been also the first phd student of our faculty to have the referees and his supervisor (Tom Fayle) attending only online due to coronavirus restrictions:]  All went well!

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27/12/2019 Jiri and Tom published a stunning review article about ants and termite interactions in collaboration with prof. Paul Eggleton in Biological Reviews

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27/11/2019 12-years of field work & data collation bring the first cross-elevational comparison of canopy ant communities, their nest sites and drivers of their structure. Nichola Plowman leads paper in Ecography built on data from two phds (her and Petr) and one master thesis (Ondrej). Check it out, it is an open-access:]!

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23/10/2019  Our protocol & guidance, how to sample “all” ants and other arthropods from a whole piece of forest has been published: [full composed pdf with protocols: 2019-Volf-etal-FULL]

Quantitative assessment of arthropod-plant interactions in forest canopies: a plot-based approach. PLOS One: e0222119.

6/07/2019 Milan has completed his expedition with colleagues to Bougainville island to explore its native and introduced ant fauna for the first time

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2/07/2019 Our PhD student Ondřej Mottl published his first paper in Biotropica on his manipulative experiments with artificial ant nests in New Guinea. Big congratulations!

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26/10/2018: Our PhD student Nichola Plowman win Jarosik award for the best ecological paper published by a student in 2017 from Czech Society for Ecology.

 

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1/09/2017: New book by Cambridge University Press published, where Petr and Tom contributed two chapters on ant-plant interactions in the rainforests:

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15/03/2017: Two papers by our ant lab members (Milan Janda, and Nic Plowman) were published in a new special issue of : 

SPECIAL FEATURE

 

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1/12/2016: Our ant data collected during  “Our Planet Reviewed” (IBISCA. PAPUA NEW GUINEA) Mt. Wilhelm expedition now part of the new study of Rob Colwell et al. covered in Ecology Letters in August 2016. Check it out!

Midpoint attractors and species richness: Modelling the interaction between environmental drivers and geometric constraints Ecology Letters 19: 1009-1022. DOI: 10.1111/ele.12640

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Report For Media: Klimes P. and Plowman N. S. (2015): Mystery of high diversity of ants in tropical forest canopies revealed: Migrant workers are more common than the locals [PDF]

Camponotus wanangus: a new ant species dedicated to Wanang village and its people in Papua New Guinea.

(P. Klimes and A. McArthur 2014)

See our also ‘Media’ page for all media coverage in Czech and English.