DUNN LAB HOME  | ANTMACROECOLOGY.ORG  |  CONTACT

Origin Story--At a hotel bar in Washington, D. C., Rob Dunn and Nate Sanders initiated a project now involving more than thirty collaborators to compile all existing data on ant communities. Each collaborator has contributed both his or her own field data and data from other studies in their focal region (e.g., Southeast Asia). Each site on the map below (with collaborators surrounding) is a point at which we know the local (and often landscape) diversity and abundance of ants. Thanks to the sociality of ant biologists we can collectively see what none of us, on the basis of our own samples, could see individually, the patterns in the diversity, abundance and consequences of ants, from forest to forest and field to field, around the world.

Collaborators: Andy Suarez, Mike Kaspari, Nick Gotelli, JP Xuxa Lessard, Ed Laurent, Donat Agosti, Xim Cerda, Rob Dunn, Benoit Guenard, Heloise Gibb, Carsten Bruhl, Stacy Philpott, Martin Pfeiffer, Milan Janda, Jonathan Majer, Brian Hetterick, Aaron Gove, Alan Andersen, Brian Fisher, Kate Parr, Nate SandersTerry McGlynn, Jack Longino, Matt Fitzpatrick, Sean Menke, Aaron Ellison. Not photographed: Mike Weiser, Javier Retana, Heraldo Vasconcelos, Xavier Arnan, Clinton Jenkins.

Other Projects Run by the Collaborators

Costa Rican Ant Identification Resources Jack Longino provides keys and detailed life history information about the ants of Costa Rica and surrounds.

AntWeb "AntWeb illustrates (the diversity of ants) by providing information and high quality color images of many of the approximately 10,000 known species of ants. AntWeb currently focuses on the species of the Nearctic and Malagasy biogeographic regions. Over time, the site will grow to describe every species of ant known."

Antbase "Antbase is a collaborative effort between scientists from around the world, aiming at providing the best possible access to the wealth of information on ants, to fulfill the conservation needs of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects (IUSSI), and the Species Survival Commission of the World Conservation Union (IUCN)."

Encyclopedia of Life (the Ants) "The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is an ambitious project to organize and make available via the Internet virtually all information about life present on Earth. At its heart lies a series of Web sites—one for each of the approximately 1.8 million known species. Join us as we explore the richness of Earth’s biodiversity!"

Even more: Pheidole Working Group, Leaf-litter Arthropods of Meso-America (LLAMA), Project ALAS (Arthropods of La Selva)

In the Journals

Dunn, R.R., N.J. Sanders, S.B. Menke, M.D. Weiser, M.C. Fitzpatrick, E. Laurent, J.-P. Lessard, D. Agosti, A. Andersen, C. Bruhl, X. Cerda, A. Ellison, B. Fisher, H. Gibb, N. Gotelli, A. Gove, B. Guénard, M. Janda, M. Kaspari, J.T. Longino, J. Majer, T.P. McGlynn, S.B. Menke, C. Parr, S. Philpott, M. Pfeiffer, J. Retana, A. Suarez, H. Vasconcelos. 2009. Climatic Drivers of Hemispheric Asymmetry in Global Patterns of Ant Species Richness. Ecology Letters. PDF

Dunn RR, et al. (22 co-authors) (2007) Global Ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Biodiversity and Biogeography—A New Database and its Possibilities. Myrmecological News 11: 000-000. PDF

In the News

Science Daily-Interview with all the collaborators whose last names begin with "A."

Who can use the database?

Anyone can use the database, so long as all of the original collaborators (above) are co-authors on work that uses the data in a substantive way and as long as that user also contributes data to the database. The original collaborators will have the option to be co-authors on all work that results from the use of the database, but new users will only be co-authors on those papers they lead.

Instructions for using the database

1. go to http://cl3-dunnlabg5.zo.ncsu.edu/~mweiser/phpMyAdmin/

2. enter username=guest password= guest

3. on the left frame, click on "guest_gaddb" (this selects the database)

4. on the left frame, click on "public" (this selects the table)

5. you can scroll through this like a flat file of the original excel file. once you have accessed the data, you can

>Get a copy for yourself Click the "Export" tab, chose the Export type Choose your options Be sure to click "Save as file" so the data will download Click "Go" >Look at the list of variables Click the "Structure" tab, which will give you the list of variable names in the table To find all the values in the table for a given variable, click the first icon under the "actions" column (one left of the pencil icon) e.g., click this icon for country, and you will get a count of rows in the database, by country

>Select based on search terms... Click the "Search" tab, which will open a query window. e.g., type "North America" in the box next to continent, you should get the 1,231 lines returned. Note that this GUI generates the MySQL query used to make the search (in the SQL query frame). You can click "edit" on this frame and it opens a new window allowing you to edit your query. >Make a specific table for yourself before downloading Once you have a specific query (nb, use the search above to generate your SQL) At the begining of this query, type "CREATE TABLE tablename " and this will make a table with your specific data in it

> If you know MySQL, you can write command line queries under the SQL tab. (If you don't know MySQL and have a specific query you want to run, please email Mike Weiser at mdweiser@ncsu.edu and he can advise you and or write the query)