Alex Wild on insects, science, and photography
In the course of assembling an insect genetics lecture for the “Insects & People” class I needed, but could not find, a graph showing the number of insect genomes sequenced by year. So I made one myself: Data are adapted from Wikipedia. The 2007 spike is a spate of Drosophila genomes intended for comparison with [...]
In case you were wondering about the ant genomes that have been, are currently being, and are proposed be sequenced, Phil Ward and Juergen Gadau have curated a list. I found the database format difficult to navigate, so I’ve distilled the ant roster into a single table: The completed and in-progress genomes reflect economically important or [...]
We interrupt Army Ant Week to announce that a paper describing the Atta cephalotes leafcutter ant genome has just been published. I’ll report more on this research next week, once we take leave of the army ants. source: Suen G, Teiling C, Li L, Holt C, Abouheif E, et al. (2011) The Genome Sequence of [...]
A big day for ant science! Four new genomes are public. These genomes complement two already-released projects, bringing the total to six. Yes, six. A year ago we didn’t have one, and now the floodgates are open. Although these latest efforts are not the first ant genomes out, today’s announcement is in some respects more [...]
[correction: When the genome paper first emerged I stated that the genomes would not be made public. This impression- due to a lag time between online publication and data release- was erroneous, and I hope the authors accept my apology.] A few days have passed since the publication by Bonasio et al of the first [...]
The journal Science has just reported the first ant genome study. Well, the first ant genomes. A pair of them, from the Florida Carpenter Ant Camponotus floridanus and the Indian jumping ant Harpegnathos saltator, both study animals in the lab of Arizona State University’s Juergen Liebig. Abstract: The organized societies of ants include short-lived worker [...]
The genome sequence of the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum was published today in PLoS. Concurrently, a set of supporting papers has come out in Insect Molecular Biology. This genome is significant for a number of reasons- it’s the first Hemipteran genome to be sequenced, aphids have an unusual reproductive cycle, and this particular species is [...]
A few months ago we learned via an unintentionally leaked press release that a team of researchers lead by Nicole Gerardo and Cameron Currie had won a Roche Applied Sciences grant competition. The team will be sequencing the complete genome of 14 players from the ant/fungus/microbe co-evolutionary system, including three attine ants from different genera. [...]
Big ant news today! Roche Applied Sciences is apparently funding the sequencing of a series of genomes- three ant and an array of fungal and microbial genomes- in an ambitious project to better understand the relationships among the players in the celebrated ant-fungus relationship. The sequencing project is headed by Nicole Gerardo of Emory University [...]
This weekend, Arizona State University is hosting a slate of myrmecologists to brainstorm on ant genomes. I’d link to the meeting information, but apparently the gathering is so informal that they’ve not given the event a web page. In any case, the topic is this: in the age of (relatively) cheap genomes, which ants should [...]
A personal blog by Illinois-based biologist and photographer Alex Wild.
Myrmecos- derived from the ancient greek word for "ant"- hosts Alex's musings about these and other little creatures that share our planet.
Questions? Email alwild [at] myrmecos.net; or follow @Myrmecos on Twitter.
