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
AVAILABLE RESOURCES
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