RESEARCH
Ants of the World With new funding from the NSF, Jack Longino continues to map the world’s ants
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or more than thirty years, University of Utah entomologist Jack Longino has been watching the ground. Whether he’s deep in a tropical jungle or scanning the sidewalks of a Central American city, Longino is always looking for ants. “Ants rule!” he says. Recently, Longino compiled those decades of work into a monograph, detailing 234 species of the ant genus Pheidole. He’s now given names to fifty-seven of those species himself. Longino formatted the monograph to emulate a bird guide, hoping to engage more ant fans in the work of documenting and conserving ant species. “You can think of what I do as making a map of diversity,” Longino says. “The first step in understanding and using animals and plants is having a map of what we’ve got. I’ve dedicated my career to filling in the map.” But he’s not stopping there. Thanks to a $1.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation, Longino and colleagues are about to embark on a project to obtain genetic information from 4,500 species of ants around the world to construct a comprehensive evolutionary tree of life for his favorite insect family.
Introducing Pheidole The ant genus Pheidole is one of the most diverse and is found throughout the world, but particularly in Central America. In 2003, famed biologist E.O. Wilson published what was then considered a comprehensive guide to Pheidole including Jack Longino in the Danum Valley, Borneo. Photo courtesy of Jack Longino.
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