- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Host is graduate student Katharina Ullmann of the Neal Williams lab. Plans are to video-record the seminar for later posting on UCTV.
"Citizen Science is a powerful tool that scientists can use to harness the power of the public," Lucky says. "Public participation in science offers both scientific and educational benefits, including the possibility of massive and openly accessible data. This approach holds the promise of a new way of doing science and a new way of learning science, but also poses challenges of organization, quality control and funding. Two projects, the School of Ants and Backyard Bark Beetles, were developed to address the main concerns with Citizen Science projects, and demonstrate how modern public participation in science can be an effective tool for teaching science and investigating topics including, but not limited to biodiversity, invasive species, population genetics, and systematics."
Lucky describes herself as "an insect systematist and science communicator with a particular interest in ants and citizen science."
Lucky, a graduate of Brown University, Providence, R.I., with a bachelor's degree in biology, with honors, received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 2010, working with major professor/ant specialist Phil Ward.
She joined the University of Florida in 2012 after serving as a postdoctoral researcher and director of the School of Ants citizen science project from 2010 to 2012 in the Department of Biology, North Carolina State University (NCSU). In 2009-10, she worked with Conservation International, Rapid Assessment Program, conducting ant biodiversity surveys in Papua, New Guinea: field collections, specimen sorting, curation and analysis.
Lucky was an invited speaker at the 2012 International Congress of Entomology, Daegu, South Korea, Aug 2012. She has also presented her work at the Entomological Society of America (ESA), and Pacific Branch of ESA and has taught numerous classes, seminars and workshops. At UC Davis, she designed a course on “Insects and the Media,” which she taught in the spring of 2006 and the fall of 2008.
Among her honors and awards:
- Global Change Award, NCSU Global Change Forum/NC Museum of Natural Sciences, 2011
- Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award, UC Davis, 2009
- Center for Population Biology Research Awards, UC Davis, 2007, 2009
- Australian Biological Resource Study Grant, with principal investigator P.S. Ward, UC Davis, 2007-2008
- Australian Biological Resource Study Grant, with principal investigator P.S. Ward, UC Davis, 2007-2008
- Jastro-Shields Research Award, UC Davis, 2006, 2007, 2008
- Center for BioSystematics Research Grant, UC Davis, 2005
- UC Davis Dept. of Entomology Fellowships, Vansell 2005, MacBeth 2005
- Fulbright Fellow, Quito, Ecuador, 2000-2002
- William Gaston Premium Scholarship in biology, Brown University, Providence, RI, 2000
Lucky is a member of the Entomological Society of America, Society for Systematic Biology, Society for Conservation Biology, American Association of University Women, Association of Women in Science, and American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Her latest peer-reviewed publications include:
Hulcr, J., Latimer, A.J., Rountree, N.R., Fierer, N., Lucky, A., Lowman, M.D., Henley, J.B. and Dunn, R.R. (Submitted to PLoS One). It's a Jungle in There: Bacteria in Belly Buttons are Highly Diverse, but Predictable.
Guenard, B. and A. Lucky (2011). Shuffling leaf litter samples produces more accurate and precise snapshots of terrestrial arthropod community composition. Environmental Entomology 40: 1523-1529.
Lucky, A. (2011).Molecular phylogeny and biogeography of the spider ants, genus Leptomyrmex Mayr (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 59: 281-292.
Lucky, A., E.M. Sarnat and L.E. Alonso (2011). Survey of the ants of the Muller Range of Papua New Guinea. RAP Bulletin of Biological Assessment 60: 45-53.
Lucky, A., K. Sagata and E.M. Sarnat (2011). Survey of the ants of the Nakanai Mountains of East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. RAP Bulletin of Biological Assessment 60: 158-157.
Lucky, A. and P.S. Ward (2010). Taxonomic revision of the ant genus Leptomyrmex Mayr. Zootaxa 2688:1-67.
Lucky, A. and E.M. Sarnat. (2010). Biogeography and diversification of the Pacific ant genus Lordomyrma Emery. Journal of Biogeography 37: 624-634.
Lucky, A. 2009.Urb-ants (Book review of Urban Ants of North America And Europe by Klotz et al., 2008). Systematic Entomology 34: 406-407.
Lucky, A. and E.M. Sarnat. 2007.New species of Lordomyrma (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Southeast Asia and Fiji. Zootaxa1681: 37–46 (2008).