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Student Research in the Kjar lab:
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Conner Scace |
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Conner is a biology/environmental studies double major working on a large USDA/Johns Hopkins project exploring the impact of organic farming on arthropod communities. We are looking at the ants from this study. The study is a comparison of pit-fall traps from till, no till, and organic farming sites. During the summer of 2009 Conner and Jessica Phillips pinned over 3000 ants and counted a total of 9022 ants as part of this study. | |
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Jessica Phillips |
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Jessica is a biology major who is also working in my lab on the USDA/Johns Hopkins project. Along with her and Conner's work on the farm ants they are also working on perfecting the isolation and amplification of genes from small amounts of ant tissue. They will both be working in my lab during the upcoming school year to try and finish the molecular work as well as help in writing the publication for the USDA data. Conner and Jessica both helped collect specimens at two bioblitzes near the Patuxent River during the spring of 2009. They also worked with me on the Bahamian insect database, adding over 900 beetles. | |
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Gabriel Sackett |
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Gabe Sackett graduated with a Bachelors in Biology in 2009. He worked with me extensively on collecting and identifying ants. | |
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Gabe was a great help at the National Geographic Bioblitz at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in the spring of 2009. There is nothing quite like pinning ants in 40 degree weather while sitting in a puddle. Gabe also worked with me on San Salvador Island in the Bahamas. We completed a survey of all literature records of Bahamian insects at the Gerace Research station. This project grew into an online database of Bahamian insects and I presented the survey as a poster during the 13th Symposium on the Natural History of the Bahamas during June of 2009. This database currently contains 1739 species with 2186 species records. |
Tessa Brennan |
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Tessa graduated in 2009 and worked in John Losey's lab at Cornell University during the summer. She plans on applying to medical school. During my junior year I did research with Dr. Kjar. My research focused on comparing ant community diversity from high and low elevations in Western New York. This research project gave me experience in the laboratory as well as extensive field work. |
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Through this project I was also able to attend National Geographic's 2008 BioBlitz in Santa Monica, California. This event was a 24-hour species inventory in the Santa Monica Mountains. This bioblitz gave me the opportunity to connect with other scientists and learn about the local plant and animal species in southern California. |
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Megan Klopfer |
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Megan graduated in 2009 with a Bachelors in Biology and is now starting her first year of medical school at SUNY Upstate. I worked on the Smithsonian Formicid Type Database. I now have a basic understanding of database programming, and I have become proficient at doing historical descriptive literature analysis and inputting type specimen information. During the summer of 2008, I was granted a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst Research Internships in Science and Engineering (RISE) Scholarship to work on a research project in Germany. I spent ten weeks working in tandem with a German PhD student on a hydrobiology project investigating the effects of the parasite Ligula intestinalis in species of wild roach. This experience allowed me not only to further refine my clinical skills but also enhanced my ability to relate to people from a variety of cultural backgrounds. |
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Hailey Collier |
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Hailey graduated from Elmira College in 2008 with a Bachelors degree in Biology. Currently she is working towards a career as a pharmacist. I conducted various studies on ant diversity and distribution in Elmira, New York. I designed pitfall traps and outlined the methods for the collection of ant species. I conducted an introductory investigation of ant species found at the Tanglewood Nature Center in Elmira, New York. I did a rapid assessment of the qualitative differences in the ant communities in various local habitats. Lastly, I aided in re-establishing the entomology collection at Elmira College which had been abandoned in the early 1950's. |
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I also attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill bioblitz at Mason Farm Biological Reserve. We explored the woods of Mason Farms examining species diversity and enjoying the natural world. We were able to obtain several ants species for the the newly established entomology collection, including a North American Army Ant (Neivamyrmex). I was able to contribute both my knowledge and experience to the collection and identification of an assortment of ant species collected. | |
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I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Kjar as a teaching fellow in a Field Biology course in the spring of 2007. The course was a study of various groups of animals and plants of the Northeastern U.S., the physical environment in which they live, and the interactions between the organisms and their environment. We explored both the terrestrial and aquatic habitats. The objective of this course was to learn how to use field guides to identify organisms, to learn how to collect invertebrate species for identification, and to apply statistically meaningful sampling methods to the study of ecology. | |
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Ajene Heastie |
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Ajene graduated from Elmira College in 2009 and has returned to the Bahamas to begin work on a Masters in Public Health. She is planning on attending medical school. I participated in a research program on ants where I investigated ants species present in a region of Upstate New York and also prepared ant specimens from San Salvador, Bahamas for species identification and diversity studies. As a research student, I attended an Entomological Society meeting at the Smithsonian Institute. I also participated in a BioBlitz where I worked with biologists to investigate ant species distribution in North Carolina. This experience gave me a new understanding of ant research and their impact on mankind. I am more aware of their necessity and now not only see them as 'simple ants', but as a complex biological model that can be used for understanding the natural world. |
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Hye Kim |
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Emiliana (Hye) graduated in 2009 with a Bachelors degree in Biology from Elmira College. She is planning on attending Dental School. My research included collecting ants in the field from different sites along the Chemung Valley in Elmira, New York. These ants were used for DNA extraction, PCR (polymerase chain reaction), and gel electrophoresis. |
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I also did research to find an inexpensive replacement for Automontage(tm) using opensource software and a simple ocular dissecting-microscope digital camera. The image to the left is of a Cow-Killer or Velvet Ant (Mutillidae) from eastern Maryland. They are distant relatives of ants and are more closely related to other wasps than ants. | |
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An important part of my research was museum curation of the ants caught in order to identify them and keep record of different ants caught and studied. Overall I have pinned and preserved 1,000's of ants from all over the United States and several other countries. |
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Tsion Minas |
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Tsion is from Ethiopia and completed her Bachelors degree in Biochemistry in 2009. She is currently in Washington, D.C. and looking for a graduate program or medical school. As far back as I can remember, I have always been interested in science. However, the limited practical experience in science in my home country led me to pursue my education here in United States. |
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In my research with Dr. Kjar I explored the reason behind the limited ant diversity in a local preserve despite the dense and apparently healthy forest. I used atomic absorption spectroscopy to detect heavy metal concentrations in ants and assessed this protocol for determining environmental pollution levels. | |
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One of the studies I did with Dr. Kjar was the design and application of tree canopy pitfall traps. We used fishing line, canvas and test tube pitfalls, a slingshot, and fishing weights to mount pitfall traps 50 feet up in the canopy of local forests. | |
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Lorrie Oakes and Anne Abbate |
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Lorrie graduated in 2009 with a Bachelors in Biology and is planning on becoming a Physicians Assistant. She is currently finishing EMT training and getting ready to apply to PA schools. Our research has primarily been to perfect techniques in the isolation and amplification of cytochrome oxidase I using very small amounts of ant tissue (one leg). The isolated gene will then be sequenced and we hope to be able to identify species and perhaps population substructure within Formica exsectoides using this gene as well as others. |
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Kimmy Kellett |
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After graduating from Elmira in 2008 Kimmy was a teaching assistant for a tropical ecology course in Costa Rica with the University of Georgia.
This year she will be working for the Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University on a project in Argentina.
During early 2010 she will be working on the endangered Florida Scrub-Jay with researchers from the Archbold Research Station in Florida.
Kimmy is planning on starting a PhD program in ecology and evolution in the fall of 2010. I worked with Dr. Kjar during the summer of 2008 to start up the Elmira College molecular biology lab. We have a long run Licor Gene Sequencer, two PCRs (one heat block style and the other a rapidcycler), ultracentrifuge, multiple gel electrophoresis kits, and other equipment devoted to DNA analysis. I sampled ants in the field, including Santa Monica California (National Geographic Bioblitz), and many other areas around upstate New York. I was able to isolate and amplify selected genes from a variety of local species and began trouble shooting the gene sequencing process. |
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