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Jonathan Shik is the group leader and is an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen and a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Jonathan works on the ecology, evolution, and physiology of insects and their symbionts. Much of this work: 1) focuses on fungus farming ants, 2) uses nutrition as an entry point for testing hypotheses, 3) harnesses diverse research approaches ranging from tropical forest fieldwork to genomic analyses.
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Ayoub Stelate is a postdoctoral researcher funded by a Semper Ardens Accelerate grant from the Carlsberg Foundation that is using advanced imaging approaches to study the cellular mechanisms of symbiotic integration between leafcutter ants and their co-evolved fungal cultivar.
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Asta Rødsgaard Jørgensen is a PhD student studying the genetic signatures of crop domestication in the cultivars of fungus-farming ants. Asta's project is funded by a Semper Ardens Accelerate grant from the Carlsberg Foundation.
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Aoife O'Brien will begin a PhD in December 2024 exploring how human activity in Denmark has changed plant communities in ways that cause nutritional stress for insect herbivores. Aoife's project is funded by a grant from the Danish Independent Research Fund and will be co-supervised by Hans Henrik Bruun at the University of Copenhagen. Aoife also performed MSc thesis (2022-2023) testing whether and how the quality of nutritional rewards produced by the fungus cultivar of leafcutter ants varies.
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Mads Ditlevsen (2024-2025) is working on a MSc thesis project comparing the nutritional foraging landscapes available to leafcutter ants across a gradient of human disturbance in Panama. Mads also perviously performed a Bachelors thesis project (2022) using comparative analyses to explore the evolution of the nutritional rewards produced by the cultivars of fungus-farming ants. Mads is now beginning a MSc project exploring the mechanisms of chemical communication within the leafcutter ant symbiosis.
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Olivia-Sofie Basse Schougaard (2025) is working on a MSc thesis that includes a summer of fieldwork studying interactions between herbivorous insects and the plants they consume. Olivia will use metabarcoding of insect stomach contents to identify diet breadths in these consumers and disentangle complex food webs. Olivia previously performed a BSc thesis (2024) exploring how ant farming strategies influence the biochemical composition of their fungal crops.
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Kristina Brunnbauer (2025) is working on a MSc thesis using controlled experiments and advanced imaging approaches to explore how pathogenic fungi invade their insect hosts. Kristina is co-supervised by Henrik De Fine Licht from the University of Copenhagen.
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Maria Andersen (2025) is working on a MSc thesis (co-supervised by Asta Rødsgaard Jørgensen) exploring how ant farmers manage the nuclear diversity within their fungal cultivars to optimize crop productivity using genetic markers and behavioral studies.
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Emilie Seigismund (2025) is performing a Bachelor's summer research project assisting Aoife O'Brien on the effects of human activity on grassland plant communities at Molslaboratoriet in northern Jutland.
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Kira Pejtersen (2025) is performing a post-graduate research project developing in vitro approaches for studying nutritional selectivity dynamics across diverse fungal symbionts of animals. In February 2024, Kira finished a MSc thesis in my group co-supervised by Ayoub Stelate on the cell biology of the fungal cultivar farmed by leafcutter ants. She is using a variety of advanced imaging approaches and in vitro experiment.
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Katrine Bæch (2025) is performing a Bachelor's summer research project assisting Aoife O'Brien on the effects of human activity on grassland plant communities at Molslaboratoriet in northern Jutland.
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Visitors
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Lina Bajic (2025) was a visiting PhD student from Ruđer Bošković Institute in Croatia who studied the temperature sensitivity of metabolic rate in Messor ants. The project was a collaboration with Dr. Jelena Bujan's research group linking microclimate and local adaptation across populations of these ants. Lina spent two months working with the respirometry setup in my research group.
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Ronan Merlotti (2024) was a visiting Bachelors student from Institut Polytechnique UniLaSalle in France who is studying insect husbandry techniques and also gained experience with molecular techniques.
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Sabrina Ferreira de Santana (2023-2024) was a visiting PhD student from Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz in Brazil. Sabrina used bioinformatics and in vitro approaches to understand how the fungal cultivar of leafcutter ants responds to the presence of viruses. Sabrina's primary PhD supervisor is Eric Aguiar.
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Lucina Yuen (2021) was a BSc student from Imperial College London who joined the team for the summer and fall of 2021. Lucina studied the domesticated fungal cultivar of leafcutter ants. She performed in vitro experiments to study how the cultivar expresses nutritional reward structures.
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Hugo Merienne (2019) was a PhD student in the lab of Vincent Fourcassie at the University of Toulouse in France, and is working in the group as an ERASMUS Fellow during the fall of 2018. His thesis work is on the biomechanics of load transport in seed harvester ants. We will be doing a series of metabolic respirometry experiments to explore the energetic costs of carrying seeds relative to worker body size in Messor barbarus.
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Nathan Cyrille (2019) is a MSc student Paris-Sud University doing a comparative study on the digestive physiology of fungus-farming ants, in collaboration with Kenneth Halberg from the University of Copenhagen.
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Cristela Sanchez Oms (2017) was a PhD student in the group of Raphael Boulay at the Universite Francois-Rabelais, Tours in France and was hosted by my group to perform metabolic respirometry experiments testing hypotheses about local adaptation in an ant species distributed across a 2000 m elevation gradient in Spain. This work was published here.
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Alumni
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Winnie Rytter (2015-2017) completed a Masters Degree in my lab studying the physiological basis for foraging behaviors in leafcutting ants. Her first chapter was recently published in Animal Behavior. Her second chapter, just accepted to Ecology, used stable isotopes to track the flow of nutrients through the complex farming systems of leafcutter ants.
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Christoffer Bergstedt (2015-2016) completed his Bachelors Thesis in my lab (co-supervised by Jes Pedersen) at the University of Copenhagen studying nutritional ecology of invasive ants.
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Ben Schantz Conlon (2020-2022) was a postdoctoral researcher studying the adaptations that have enabled leafcutter ants to farm their fungal cultivar within and across ecologically diverse habitats
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Mads Wolter (2017-2019) has completed his masters thesis using stable isotopes to study the production ecology of fungus-farming ants. Mads was co-supervised by Anders Michelsen from the Section of Terrestrial Ecology at the University of Copenhagen.
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Birla Krabbe (2017-2019) performed her Bachelor's thesis studying the nutritional ecology of the ant Monomorium pharaonis to understand its success as an invasive species. Birla was co-supervised by Jes Pedersen (U. Copenhagen), and then worked as a research technician in my lab. She is now pursuing a Masters degree in Nature Management.
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Maria Scotwin (2017-2019) completed a bachelors thesis in my lab studying how division of labor shapes gardening behaviors across species of fungus-farming ants and then worked as a research technician in my lab.
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Pol Lannes Salvado (2018-2019) performed a Bachelors thesis project while on exchange from the University of Barcelona. Pol worked on the foraging ecology of fungus-farming ants.
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Sebastian Kofoed (2018-2019) performed a bachelors thesis studying the evolutionary ecology of male ants. Specifically, he is interested in understanding factors generating variation in sperm number across species and within colonies of fungus farming ants.
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Søren Krath Christensen (2019) worked as a lab technician overseeing the maintenance of ant colonies
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Aidan James (2019) performed a bachelors thesis project exploring the fundamental nutritional niche requirements of fungal symbionts of leafcutter ants. Aidan was a visiting student from Imperial College in London.
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Antonin Crumiere (2018-2020) was a postdoctoral researcher exploring the evolution and ecology of crop production in leafcutter ants. He is using a combination of field and laboratory experiments to explore how leafcutter ants and their domesticated fungal cultivars communicate their nutritional needs.
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David O'Tuama (2018-2019) performed his Masters degree using stable isotopes to study whether and how fungal cultivars process structural carbohydrates (e.g. cellulose). The results of this work are currently in Press in Biology Letters.
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Calum Stephenson (2018-2019) performed a Masters project using proteomics to explore the chemical composition of nutritional rewards produced by the fungal cultivar of leafcutter ants. Calum is currently pursuing a PhD at Washington University in the US.
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Enzo Langkilde [L] & Piet Nielsen [R] (2019) performed Bachelors projects developing a liquid media approach for measuring nutrient foraging in insect pathogenic fungi under co-supervision of Henrik de Fine Licht.
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Zsuzsanna Csontos (2018-2020) performed masters thesis research exploring how the fundamental nutritional niche breadth of fungal parasites influences the diversity of hosts they can infect. The project will focus on insect pathogenic fungal genus Metarhizium, more precisely, of the species M. acridum (specialist pathogen of locusts), as well as generalist insect-pathogenic fungi such as M. robertsii and M. anisopliae. Zsuzsanna is co-supervised by Professor Henrik de Fine Licht from the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at the University of Copenhagen.
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Emil Petersen (2019-2020) performed a Masters thesis building a diet database to perform comparative analyses studying the realized nutritional niches of ant species spanning the phylogeny. We collaborated with Audrey Dussutour on this project.
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Marta Contreras Serrano (2019-2020) performed a Masters thesis testing hypotheses about physiological adaptations in fungal cultivars of leafcutter ants to extreme ecological conditions, like secondary metabolites in plant fragments.
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Celia Izquierdo worked as a scientific assistant caring for our lab colonies of fungus-farming ants
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August Hansen (2022-2023) performed a BSc thesis using nutritional analyses of insect prey organs to test whether and how nutrition mediates the infection timeline of insect-pathogenic fungi. August is co-supervised by Professor Henrik de Fine Licht from the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at the University of Copenhagen.
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Julie Andersen (2020-2021) performed a Masters thesis project studying whether and how leafcutter ants that produce a fungal cultivar make decisions about how to process incoming resources (e.g. freshly cut leaves) to nutritionally provision their crops.
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Valentin Specht (2022) performed a Masters thesis project quantifying the realized nutritional niches of two neotropical ant species. He is nutritionally analyzing prey items sampled from the mandibles of laden foragers in Panama.
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Søren Henriksen (2021) performed a Bachelors thesis using eDNA approaches to reconstruct the foodwebs of tropical ant species.
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Paulina Chudzik (2021) performed a Bachelors thesis testing whether and how foraging decisions by fungus-farming ants are mediated by toxic plant secondary metabolites.
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Jakob Priess Nielsen (2022-2023) completed his Masters thesis partnering with Stephan Østerballe-Mourtizen to study the functional consequences of crop diversity in a fungus-farming ant species.
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Stephan Østerballe-Mouritzen (2022-2023) completed his Masters thesis partnering with Jakob Priess Nielsen to study the functional consequences of crop diversity in a fungus-farming ant species.
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Mille Bolander (2020-2023) performed her Masters research working with Julie Andersen on a project to study whether and how leafcutter ants that produce a fungal cultivar make decisions about how to process incoming resources (e.g. freshly cut leaves) to nutritionally provision their crops. Mille then worked as a scientific assistant in the group until early 2023.
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Oscar Hess (2023) performed a BSc thesis exploring how the farming strategies of fungus farming ants have shaped the evolution of thermal performance in their fungal cultivars.
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Asger Roland Jensen (2023-2024) performed a MSc co-supervised by Asta Rødsgaard Jørgensen using bioinformatic and culture-based approaches to explore the functions of microbial symbionts in the fungal cultivar of leafcutter ants
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Anke Posma (2023-2024) performed a MSc exploring how land use change impacts the stability of mutualisms. She performed fieldwork at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute focusing on the ability of leafcutter ants to farm their fungal cultivar in different habitats.
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Line Bock-Poulsen (2024) worked as a Bachelors student research assistant managing aspects of ant colony husbandry.
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Sarah Kock (2024) performed a Bachelor thesis using DNA barcoding to test hypotheses about coevolution between fungus farming ants and their fungal cultivars. Sarah also worked as a research assistant managing aspects of ant colony husbandry.
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Malthe Rasmussen (left, 2025) & Ludvig Falkentorp (right, 2025) performing a joint BSc thesis exploring the nutritional niche requirements of entomopathic fungi from the genus Metarhizium in collaboration with Associate Professor Henrik De Fine Licht from the University of Copenhagen.
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Katrine Ottesen (2024) is performing a MSc project co-supervised by Caio Leal-Dutra using bioinformatic and lab-based approaches to explore the mechanisms of genomic evolution in the mitochondria of fungal cultivar of leafcutter ants.
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Caio Leal-Dutra (2020-2024) was a postdoctoral researcher funded by a Villum Experiment grant who used experimental, genomic, and bioinformatic approaches to study the evolution fungal cultivars domesticated by the attine farming ants.
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Collaborators
Audrey Dussutour (University of Paul Sabbatier, Toulouse, France)
Jacobus Boomsma (University of Copenhagen)
Bill Wcislo (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute)
Pepijn Kooij (Kew Gardens)
Rachelle Adams (Ohio State University)
Juan Santos (St. John's University)
David Donoso (Escuela Politecnica Nacional, Quito)
Xavier Arnan (CREAF Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications)
Anders Michelsen (University of Copenhagen)
Henrik de Fine Licht (University of Copenhagen)
Jes Pedersen (University of Copenhagen)
Audrey Dussutour (University of Paul Sabbatier, Toulouse, France)
Jacobus Boomsma (University of Copenhagen)
Bill Wcislo (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute)
Pepijn Kooij (Kew Gardens)
Rachelle Adams (Ohio State University)
Juan Santos (St. John's University)
David Donoso (Escuela Politecnica Nacional, Quito)
Xavier Arnan (CREAF Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications)
Anders Michelsen (University of Copenhagen)
Henrik de Fine Licht (University of Copenhagen)
Jes Pedersen (University of Copenhagen)