- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The award recognizes a graduate student for distinguished research and scholarly activity in the field of social insect biology. Borowiec received a certificate, honorarium, and a one-year subscription to Insectes Sociaux.
Borowiec is now a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of evolutionary biologist/ant specialist Christian Rabeling of Rochester, N.Y. The lab will be moving to Tempe, Ariz. in January.
“What is notable about Marek is that even as he became trained as a highly accomplished molecular phylogeneticist and computational biologist, he remained focused on organism-centered questions, driven by a deep and abiding appreciation of natural history,” said Ward.
Borowiec is the first from the Ward lab to receive the Eickwort Award.
The IUSSI-NAS Committee, chaired by Terry McGlynn and Stephen Pratt, and including members Rebecca Clark, Hongmei Li-Byarlay, Juliana Rangel, and Chris Smith, praised his work as having a significant impact on the field of social insect evolutionary biology.
They issued this statement:
“Although he has just received his PhD, Marek's work has already had a significant impact on the field of social insect evolutionary biology,” said the committee of . “His dissertation, completed under the supervision of Phil Ward at UC Davis, included a landmark revision of the genera in the diverse army ant subfamily Dorylinae. Marek produced a classification of the army ants in which morphological and molecular genetic data are fully congruent with each other, an unprecedented feat in ant taxonomy. His work showed decisively that the ‘army ant syndrome' evolved independently in the New World and Old World tropics, settling a century-old controversy.”
“Besides his army ant work, Marek also contributed to phylogenomic research demonstrating that ants are the sister group of the bees and spheciform wasps, and he was first author of an important paper showing that Ctenophora, the comb jellies, is the sister group to all other metazoans, thus resolving one of the earliest phylogenetic bifurcations in the animal kingdom. Marek's strengths in taxonomy and phylogenetics are supported by his accomplishments in bioinformatics, which include developing and publishing a novel tool to manipulate DNA sequence alignments of genomic datasets.”
“Marek's recommenders praise him as a well-rounded biologist with a deep appreciation of natural history. “He doesn't just excel in ant taxonomy, or phylogenetics, or bioinformatics. He excels in all of these disciplines. It is his love for ants and his curiosity about the natural world that motivates his studies.”
Marek is also a good scientific citizen, actively serving the systematics community as a subject editor for ZooKeys and Biodiversity Data Journal and as a frequent contributor to online systematics resources and databases. His research and scholarly achievements make Marek Borowiec a very deserving winner of this year's George C. Eickwort Student Research Award.”
Borowiec's research interests include phylogeny, taxonomy, biogeography, and natural history of ants. Before enrolling at UC Davis, Borowiec received his master's degree in 2009 from the Department of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Taxonomy, University of Wroclaw, Poland.
"My focus has been primarily on ant diversity and evolution and in my research I combine field work, morphology, molecular phylogenetics, and comparative methods," Borowiec said. "I am also interested in computing and phylogeny estimation from next-generation sequencing data."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
This is his exit seminar. Borowiec received his doctorate in entomology in June, studying with major professor Phil Ward. He is now a postdoc in the lab of evolutionary biologist/ant specialist Christian Rabeling of Rochester, N.Y. The lab will be moving to Tempe, Ariz. in January.
"Ants are the world's most successful eusocial organisms." Borowiec says. "Long history, high species diversity, and extreme variety of life histories make them an excellent group in which many evolutionary questions can be addressed."
His research interests include phylogeny, taxonomy, biogeography, and natural history of ants. Before enrolling at UC Davis, Borowiec received his master's degree in 2009 from the Department of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Taxonomy, University of Wroclaw, Poland.
"My focus has been primarily on ant diversity and evolution and in my research I combine field work, morphology, molecular phylogenetics, and comparative methods," Borowiec says. "I am also interested in computing and phylogeny estimation from next-generation sequencing data."
His dissertation research at UC Davis focused on building a taxonomic and phylogenetic framework for the research on army ant evolution. "Although army ants include very charismatic species, they belong to a larger group, the subfamily Dorylinae," he noted. "In addition to the army ants, dorylines comprise many cryptic ants whose biology and even taxonomy have been neglected. Partly as a result of this, even phylogenetic relationships of the army ants are not well-understood. The first step to advancing evolutionary research in the group was thus to examine the morphological diversity within this lineage. This resulted in a generic revision of the subfamily, published open-access in ZooKeys. Expertise gained during this work allowed me to design robust taxon sampling for a phylogeny of the dorylines based on next-generation sequencing data (ultraconserved elements or UCEs), currently in preparation."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Faculty and graduate students with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology--and others associated with an ENT/NEM lab--got together for a retreat, held Friday, Oct. 14 through Sunday, Oct. 16 at Sagehen Creek Field Station in Truckee.
Doctoral candidate (and photographer) Sandy Olkowski shared some of her photos of the activities, including insect collecting and dinner preparation. She also took a photo of deer at the campsite.
The participants got to know one another and also enjoyed the natural areas around the field station.
Sagehen Creek Field Station in Truckee is approximately 2 hours from Davis. It also the site of Professor Phil Ward's popular "Bug Boot Camp."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The event, free and open to the public, takes place from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the half-acre bee garden, located on Bee Biology Road, next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, west of the central campus.
Among the native ants at the haven are
- Dorymyrmex insanus (workers small, ~3 mm long, black; conspicuous crater-shaped nests in bare soil)
- Dorymyrmex bicolor (workers small, ~3 mm long, bicolored, dull orange and black; conspicuous crater-shaped nests in bare soil)
- Prenolepis imparis (also known as the “winter ant” or “winter honey ant”; workers small (3-4 mm long), brown, with shiny gaster; inconspicuous nests in soil)
- Formica moki (sometimes called “field ants”; workers medium-sized (6 mm long), with a dark head, orange-brown mesosoma (thorax) and silvery-gray gaster; nest in soil)
Images of these species can be found on the AntWeb (www.antweb.org).
The haven is home to many insects other than bees, noted Christine Casey, director of the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, which is owned and operated by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. It was planted in the fall of 2009.
Approximately six other species of native ants reside in the vicinity of the garden, including Formica aerata, Pogonomyrmex subdentatus, and Solenopsis xyloni. The introduced Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) occurs around the Bee Biology building, but it appears not to have colonized the bee garden.
Attendees will learn how to observe and identify California native ants, and learn about the differences between bees and ants.
The program is part of a brown bag lunch series. For more information see the flier and access the haven web site.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
John "Jack" Longino, professor and associate chair of biology at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and the adjunct curator of entomology, Utah Museum of Natural History, University of Utah, will speak on "Project ADMAC or Ant Diversity of the Mesoamerican Corridor" from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall.
Ant specialist Phil Ward, professor of entomology, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will introduce and host him.
"The MesoAmerican corridor is a zone of complex tectonic history, episodic biotic interchange between large continents, and frequent mountain-building," Longino said. "Ants blanket this landscape, forming a tapestry of fine-scale habitat specialization and geographic replacement. Many taxonomists have contributed to the description of species in the region and this fundamental 'biodiversity mapping' continues apace. Project ADMAC (Ant Diversity of the MesoAmerican Corridor) combines morphological analysis with large-scale DNA sequencing (targeted enrichment of Ultra-Conserved Elements) to reveal the evolutionary history and geographic structure of ant species in MesoAmerica.
"Ants show very strong patterns of elevational specialization and geographic turnover, and Project ADMAC will address questions of (1) how and when montane species evolve, (2) the effects of differing mountain ages on communities, (3) the impact of lowland barriers on montane ant dispersal, and (4) whether ants experienced a major biotic interchange on the closure of the Panamanian isthmus."
Longino addressed the Entomological Society of America meeting last November on the topic. He told of plans
1. to build a detailed biodiversity map for an ecologically dominant group of insects (ants) in a biogeographically important region of the world (the MesoAmerican corridor);
Longino's fascination with insects began in his childhood. His research statement:
"We share the planet with millions of species, and many of them are insects. A childhood fascination with insects led me to an interest in ecology and the desire to explain patterns of diversity, and I settled on ants as an ecologically dominant group of insects worthy of study. As it became clear that I was living during a time of enormous biotic change caused by human activities, I developed a strong conviction that it was important not only to understand patterns of diversity but to document it in detail for this time in history. I divide my time between two research fields: taxonomy and ecology. On the taxonomy side, I have coordinated large-scale inventories of Neotropical insect biodiversity, I discover and describe new species of ants, and I further refine our understanding of species ranges and morphological variability. I make use of advanced imaging technology, specimen-level databases, and Web-dissemination to make biodiversity data available to the widest audiences. On the ecology side, I use quantitative inventory techniques that allow analysis of diversity patterns. I am interested in how species are distributed on tropical mountainsides, what ecological factors explain the elevational range limits of species, and how species might respond to climate change."
Longino was interviewed in August of 2013 by NPR on his research. He told NPR he started out collecting stamps in his childhood, but that bored him. He decided to "get small."
"If you're shopping for a home entertainment system," he says, "you can't do better than a good dissecting microscope," he said. At the time of the NPR interview, Longino had just published two papers describing 33 new species of ants, bringing his personal "new species" total to 131, NPR reported. In the article, Longino described himself as "average" among entomologists, pointing out that some entomologists have described thousands of new species.
Longino received his bachelor's degree in zoology, with distinction, in 1978 from Duke University, and his doctorate in zoology in 1984 from the University of Texas, Austin. He then served as an assistant research biologist at UC Santa Barbara; academic director of the Monteverde Tropical Biology Quarter, UC Education Abroad Program; adjunct assistant curator of the Florida State Museum of Natural History (Allyn Museum of Entomology), and scientific director of Project ALAS. He joined the Evergreen State College, Washington, serving from 1991 to 2011 before becoming a professor in the Department of Biology, University of Utah.
His recent publications include:
Longino, J. T., M. G. Branstetter, and R. K. Colwell. 2014. How ants drop out: ant abundance on tropical mountains. PLoS ONE 9:e104030.
Longino, J. T. 2013. A revision of the ant genus Octostruma Forel 1912 (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). Zootaxa 3699:1-61.
Longino, J. T. 2013. A review of the Central American and Caribbean species of the ant genus Eurhopalothrix Brown and Kempf, 1961 (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), with a key to New World species. Zootaxa 3693:101-151.
Longino, J. T. 2012. A review of the ant genus Adelomyrmex Emery 1897 (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) in Central America. Zootaxa 3456:1-35.
Longino, J. T., R. K. Colwell. 2011. Density compensation, species composition, and richness of ants on a Neotropical elevation gradient. Ecosphere 2:art29.