Science communication is an essential part of being a scientist.

— And I enjoy making my work accessible to a broad audience. There is a tendency in society to increasingly disconnect from nature. My contribution to changing that is by using my research and my passion for ants. I love telling the stories of my field experiences and sharing the incredible natural beauty I see around me.

Research is an adventure and I like to treat it as such.

PLEASE ALSO visit my web-based project discoverants.com where I feature educational resources primarily for teachers who want to bring ants and ant (citizen) science into their classrooms.

TEACHERS, WE CREATED a comprehensive TEACHER GUIDE built around the Ant Picnic Project – It features a suite of standards-aligned classroom materials for students in grades K-12 including data- and arts-focused activities such as Ant Picnic Data Discovery and Find Your Spirit Ant

DOWNLOAD HERE

AVAILABLE RESOURCES

find your spirit ant

Ants have personalities too! this is a fun resource to learn about the differences between ant species (there’s also an associated teaching module!)

TEACHING MODULES

activities developed as part of the students discover project with the goal to bring real science into the classroom

identification keys

try identifying some of the most common critters around you – various area versions & languages available

“How to recognize” SERIES

featuring the most important distinguishing characters of animals around you: Fire Ant · Odorous house ant · argentine ant · cellar spider

ant subfamily info sheet

ants are a diverse group of insects. here’s how to distinguish the four most common subfamilies.

ant petiole info card

what’s a petiole? – it’s the character that makes an ant an ant and discerns subfamilies

ant anatomy

featuring the proper names of all body parts of an ant — various language versions available

Species Scape IMAGE

the size of each organism represents the number of species in the group — a collaboration with Clint Penick – associated YOUR WILD LIFE blog post

All about ants poster

basics on ant biology (including the ant life cycle) and some cool ant facts

BugFest is an annual public event at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

30,000+ visitors get to interact with insect experts through educational & entertaining displays, exhibits and activities relating to insects.

What’s that smell? At BugFest 2013 we asked people to identify the smell of the Odorous House Ant.

Check out the fire ant ball! At BugFest 2015 we showed off some of the cool properties of fire ants.

Mammals vs. Insects — I talked about The coolest Ants at BugFest 2016 and took the opportunity to put animal diversity into perspective.

Which ant species is it? At BugFest 2016 we set up microscopes for everyone to try ant identification first hand.

Can you recognize a fire ant? At BugFest 2016 we challenged your fire ant ID skills!

Find your spirit ant! Ants have personalities too! At BugFest 2016 we helped people find their match. More at yourspiritant.com