Ana Jesovnik, SI Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Hymenoptera
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Research Interests:
Evolutionary biology, taxonomy, phylogeny and natural history of ants.
Current Projects:
- Taxonomy and phylogeny of the fungus growing ant genus Sericomyrmex, using both morphological and molecular approaches.
- Diversity of ants of Papua New Guinea and Melanesia (Principal Investigator: Milan Janda, http://www.newguineants.org/
- Inventory and ecology studies of Croatian ant fauna, with Croatian Myrmecological society (www.mirmekolozi.wordpress.com).
The Croatian Myrmecological Society is an NGO founded in December of 2007, in Zagreb, Croatia. Its primary goals are researching biodiversity of Croatian ant fauna and the awakening of public awareness for the importance of ants in the stability of Earth's ecosystems. It was founded by, at the time, 3 biology students who were simply enthusiastic about ants. After realizing that in Croatia there is not a single biologist working on any aspect of myrmecology they decided to change that by conducting biodiversity and ecology studies of ants all over Croatia, and at the same time spreading the word abut their importance - equally to the fellow biologist and to the broader public.
To date, we have finished inventory projects for three Croatian protected areas, with the results published in a compendium of interdisciplinary research. We also established an official collection of Croatian ants, something that didn’t exist until now. Also, we got involved in two ecological research projects – the first a comparison study of ants from different types of wetlands, which resulted in a poster presented at the Copenhagen IUSSI meeting in 2010 (“Ant diversity in Croatian peat bogs”). We have managed to establish a wonderful collaboration with Milan Janda, helping him with leaf-litter sample processing of New Guinea ants, which gave us insight into the remarkable tropical ant fauna. Our members attended the Ant course in 2008 (Venezuela) and 2009 (Arizona), and 3 European meetings: Hungary in 2008, Germany in 2009 and Denmark in 2010. In accordance with the Croatian Myrmecological Society’s secondary goal we have designed and printed promotional material, held plenty of educational workshops, published a cover article in a Croatian popular-scientific magazine, given an interview for a daily newspaper, and appeared twice on national television.
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