Clockwise from top left: 1) The research team embarking on a hard morning of field work in a Panamanian rainforest, 2) Workers of the leafcutter ant Atta colombica tending their fungal cultivar, 3) The tiny nutritional rewards produced by the domesticated fungal crop of leafcutter ants (gongylidia, SEM), 4) Artistic display of plant fragments foraged by leafcutter ants in a Panamanian rainforest, 5) Outreach about our ant research at Culture Night in Denmark

​The lab's research is currently funded generous grants from the Villum Foundation and the Carlsberg Foundation

The 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

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Updates

New paper led by Caio Leal-Dutra
​A high-quality genome based on
​PacBio long-read sequencing reveals crucial evolutionary signatures of crop domestication in the fungal cultivar farmed by leafcutter ants.

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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

[email protected]
​@JonathanShik
​ORCID: 0000-0003-3309-7737