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Research focus: Studies on ants, alien and native plants, and sampling methods.
Webpages produced:
Research on sampling methods: Modeling the impact of transect sampling on biodiversity measures
Marine and Island Ecology Term III Bahamas Course Home Page
Undergraduate Research Students in the Kjar Lab
The Isaac F. Stidham Moth Collection
Insects of the Bahamas Online Database
Insect barcode label maker and pictures from my Term III Field Biology course
Smithsonian Database of Ant Types
The Bill Brown Memorial Library.
Biodiversity Database of Washington, D.C.
Arthropods of Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, Virginia: A Searchable Online Database
Arthropods of the Washington, D.C., Area:
A Searchable Online Database
Teaching:
- Biological Concepts
- Developmental Biology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Field Biology
- Introduction to Environmental Science
- Invertebrate Zoology
- Junior Seminar
- Marine and Island Ecology (Gerace Research Center, San Salvador, Bahamas)
- When Worlds Collide (Freshman Core)
My research is focused on the interaction between ants and the environment. In particular, I am interested in how environmental changes affect ant populations, distribution, and diversity. Ants are important ecosystem engineers and changes to the abundance or species composition may have far reaching implications
for many arthropod and plant communities.
Searching for Vollenhovia emeryi on the Potomac River.
Along with my field research, I also collaborate with John Pickering at the University of Georgia and others on www.discoverlife.org, and Ted Schultz and the ant lab at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
We have completed an image database of all Smithsonian ant type specimens and we are now working on verifying the identity of each specimen. Recently some of the ant images have been added as 3d.
This is an example of my work at the Smithsonian. This is a Camponotus cerberulus. Click on a thumbnail to enlarge.
You can view more of the Smithsonian ants I have photographed here
The Discoverlife IdNatureguide is a matrix based key and will make a major advance
in biodiversity studies, allowing people without extensive training in
ant taxonomy or access to revisions and books, that are long out of print,
to identify and report ant species. This key
is a preliminary key to the ants of Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve. All ants resolve quickly and you should have an ID with as few as three characters.
To use the key just select a character, click 'identify', then above the
list to the left click on 'simplify' to rebuild the key, now just keep repeating
until you have identified your ant.
Field work:
Currently I am working on an inventory of upstate NY ant species, sequencing select genes from several species of ants, and improving sampling methods. I have worked with undergraduate research students on random sampling of two local forests. We tested two novel pitfall trap designs: one arboreal, and another for forests with difficult soils. We are also conducting behavioral experiments on ant recognition and antagonism among transplanted mound ants.
Lab work:
My undergraduate research students and I have have been working on perfecting the isolation and sequencing of cytochrome oxidase in Formica exsectoides during the fall and winter of 2008-2009. We have also been working on the methods and sensitivity of atomic absorption to detect heavy metals present in environments using ants. During the summer of 2009 we will continue to work on these two projects.
My most recent project is a large study on the impacts of till, no till, and organic farming on ant communities in agricultural fields. We have so far counted 9023 ants from this study and are working on getting the ants IDed and the data analyzed.
Myself, Marcia Metcalf, Lynn Gillie, and some of our 2009 summer research students
Education:
Northern State University 9/95-9/99 B.S. cum laude Biology
Georgetown University 9/00-10/02 M.S. Biology
Georgetown University 9/00-12/05 Ph.D. Biology
Publications:
Kjar, D. S., G. J. Sackett, J. D. Phillips, and C. W. Scace. (in press). Insects of the Bahamas. Proceeding of the 13th Symposium On the Natural History of the Bahamas.
Kjar, D. S. 2009. The Ant Community of a Riparian Forest in the Dyke Marsh Preserve, Fairfax County, Virginia, and a Checklist of Mid-Atlantic Formicidae. Banisteria. 33: 3-17
Kjar, D. S., and T. R. Suman. 2007. First records of invasion by the myrmecine Japanese Ant Vollenhovia emeryi W. M. Wheeler (Hymenoptera:Formicinae) in the United States. Proc. Ent. Soc. Wash. 109: 596-604
Kjar, D. S. and E. M. Barrows. 2004. Arthropod Community Heterogeneity in a Mid-Atlantic Forest Highly Invaded by Alien Organisms. Banisteria. 24: 26-37
Kjar, D. S. and E. M. Barrows. Alien- and native-plant correlations and environmental disturbances in a U.S. National Park. (in prep)
Kjar, D. S. An evaluation of species sampling efficacy using field studies and computer modeling. (in prep)
Kjar, D. S. Correlation of Native-ant-species incidence with alien-plant cover in a U.S. National Park forest. (in prep)
Kjar, D. S. and J. Reed. 2010 The Isaac F. Stidham Moth Collection Online Database.
This database contains a collection of moth specimens dating from the early 1900s.
Kjar, D. S. and G. Sackett. 2009 Insect species reported as collected in the Bahamas. Online Database.
This database contains the species recorded as observed or collected in the Bahamas from 56 published studies and lists.
Kjar, D. S., M. Kweskin, and T. R. Schultz. 2009. Smithsonian Ant Type Specimen Image Database.
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institute.
Kjar, D. S., J. Sosa-Calvos, D. Agosti, N. Johnson, and T. R. Schultz. 2009. The Bill Brown Memorial Library.
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institute.
Barrows, E. M. and D. S. Kjar. 2004. Arthropods of Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, Virginia: A Searchable Online Database (ADMWPD). Website.http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/barrowse/nps/dmwp.cfm
This website is an online database of arthropod species caught or observed in the Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve. This database includes 29 species of Formicidae.
Barrows, E. M. and D. S. Kjar. 2004. Biodiversity Database of the Washington, D.C., Area (BDWA). Website. http://biodiversity.georgetown.edu
I designed this website as an online, searchable collection of images and information on the biodiversity of the Washington, D.C., Area. It has over 2000 webpages, 5000 digital images, and many pages of information on local biota. This database is linked to the other databases produced by our lab, allowing images and information to be seamlessly integrated into species lists produced for the national park service. This website receives over 12,000 hits per month.
Barrows, E. M., D. S. Kjar, C. R. Bird, B. Q. Chung, T. Q. Chung, and M. R. Minor. 2004. Arthropods of the Washington, D.C., Area: A Searchable Online Database (AWDCAD). Website.
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/barrowse/nps/
This website is an online searchable database of over 12,000 species found in an extensive and ongoing literature search funded by the National Park Service.
Selected Invitations, Honors and Fellowships, Presentations:
2010 Kjar D. S., K. Szlavecz, M. Cavigelli, J. Phillips, C. Scace. Ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) community differences associated with organic, no-till, and chisel-till cropping systems (maize and soybeans). Poster presented at the International Union for the Study of Social Insects 2010 Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark.
2009 Kjar D. S., G. Sackett. A preliminary species list of insects found on San Salvador, Bahamas. Poster and database demonstration at the 13th Symposium on the Natural History of the Bahamas, San Salvador, Bahamas. June
2009 Ant specialist at the Patuxent River Park Bioblitz, Upper Marlboro, Maryland, May
2009 Ant specialist at the National Geographic's Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Bioblitz, Gary, Idiana, May
2008 Ant specialist at the National Geographic's Santa Monica Mountains Bioblitz, Santa Monica, California, May
2007 Ant specialist at the University of North Carolina's Mason Farm Bioblitz, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, September
2007 Ant specialist at the Jug Bay Bioblitz, Patuxent, Maryland, September
2007 Ant specialist at National Geographic's Rock Creek National Park Bioblitz, Washington D.C., July
2006 Ant specialist at the Potomac Gorge NPS Biioblitz in Glen Echo Maryland, June
2006 Invited to speak on the effects of imperfect sampling regimes and species patchiness on species estimators at the International Union for the Study of Social Insects 2006 Congress, Washington, DC, July 31st - August 4th
2006 Featured in the documentary movie "On the Edge: The Potomac River Dyke Marsh" World premier at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. March 21st.
2005 Edward M. Barrows, Christiane R. Bird, Daniel G. Balogh, Daniel S. Kjar and Catherine E. B. McCall. "Arthropoversity" of the Capital Area, A-Z: Acari to Zoraptera. Presentation to the Entomological Society of Washington, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.
2005 "A new frontier for a very old science: Modern bioinformatics and database organization in taxonomy" guest lecturer for the Howard Hughes bioinformatics course at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
2005 "How to study & monitor life on Earth" at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) and the Heinz Center. Feb 21st and 22nd. http://www.discoverlife.org/pa/ev/me/2005dc/
"Studies on the ants, alien and native plants, and ant sampling methods in a U.S. National Park." presentation and defense of Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, Washington D.C., 1 December 2005
"Alien plants in an eastern riparian forest: is there an impact on ants and native plants?" Presentation to the Washington Biologists' Field Club, Smithsonian National Zoological Park, Washington, D.C., 22 April 2005
"The Ants of Dyke Marsh Preserve: Are Alien Plants Changing the Native Ant Community?" Presentation to the Entomological Society of Washington, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C., 3 March 2005
"Using Coldfusion, Discoverlife.org, and the internet to monitor and identify species: Demonstrations of a literature database, a sampling event database, online matrix keys, and realtime mapping of species information online." Presentation to National Park Service employees from the Rock Creek Park and the Center for Urban Ecology, Rock Creek Park, Washington, DC, 11 February 2005
"Ant Community Changes Associated with Introduced Plant Species." poster presented at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation's 9th annual spring symposium on invertebrate conservation at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, 25-26 March 2004
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