Clockwise from top left: 1) Students relaxing along banks of La Seda creek after a hard morning of field work in a Panamanian rainforest, 2) Workers of the ant Paratrachmyrmex cornetzi tending their fungal cultivar, 3) Outreach about our ant research at Culture Night in Denmark, 4) Student Winnie Rytter defending her Masters thesis on ant physiological ecology
The lab's research is currently funded generous grants from the Villum Foundation and the Carlsberg Foundation |
The current (spring 2022) Integrative Evolutionary Biology team (L to R): Caio Leal-Dutra, Soren Henriksen, Benjamin Conlon, Paulina Chudzik, Jonathan Shik, Mille Bolander, Valentin Specht, Julie Andersen, Mads Ditlevsen, August Hansen
|
Updates
April 2022 New paper accepted in Biology Letters, showing that fungal cultivar of leafcutter ants converts cellulose into edible food
The study was led by postdoc Ben Conlon
|
March 2022: New paper accepted in Ecology, shows tests whether plant toxins prevent leafcutter ants from optimally provisioning their fungal cultivar
This study was led by postdoc Antonin Crumiere
|
February 2022 New paper deposited on bioRxiv showing that a fungal cultivar recycles its own tissues as food for leafcutter ant farmers
This study was led by postdoc Caio Leal-Dutra
|
Contact information
Associate Professor
Section for Ecology and Evolution Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 15, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Research Associate Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa Ancon, Republic of Panama |
Jonathan Shik
jonathan.shik@bio.ku.dk @JonathanShik ORCID: 0000-0003-3309-7737 |