Progress Report

Progress Report:

Amy Mertl finished looking at the rest of my Pheidole. I have therefore updated my Pheidole webpages and species lists. The current (possibly final) species list for the Pheidole of Tiputini (from my survey): ademonia, allarmata, amazonica, astur, biconstricta, cephalica, cramptoni, deima, fimbriata, floricola, fracticeps, gilva, horribilis, laidlowi, lemnisca, metana, midas, nitella, peruviana, pholeops, pubiventris, sabella, sarpedon, scalaris, scolioceps, tristicula, xanthogaster, ALM006, ALM013, ALM022, ALM023, ALM025, ALM026, ALM028, ALM031, ALM032, ALM033, and ALM034. Also maybe sagax -- there was some confusion and Amy is rechecking that. This is just from my collection -- Amy actually has a lot more species from her own study. Check out her website for further Pheidole, although I think maybe she hasn't updated it with the new species yet. Give it a day or two.

Received an email from Jack Longino offering to check my Wasmannia identifications. Yay! Even better, he offered out of the blue to look at my Crematogaster. Hallelujah! He might regret that but I will definitely be taking him up on that offer!

Talked with my advisor about my thesis, my progress, etc, and am definitely feeling more focused and organized.

Talked with Winston (my new work study student) who is doing a fantastic job sorting my ants in alcohol. Am feeling good about Winston -- he is doing a great job. When he is done with that I will be able to send specimens to other folks to do DNA on, which is a nice thing to do, especially if they are identifying my ants for me.

I also arranged to have our workshop supervisor make us more subterranean probes so that we can lend them out to folks and also maybe do some studies with them up here. We are also talking to some people about having them manufactured so that it will be easier for others to purchase and use them for their own studies. That will definitely take a few months, though. At the very least.

The rest of my day was spent working on the probe paper for submission to a new journal. I can barely stand to look at the thing.

update: see Pheidole Update for corrections to the Pheidole species list