Morphological diversity of leaf-cutting ants
- Beschreibung
Ants are some of the most abundant and diverse insects on Earth. There are over 14,000 ant species of which 260 grow their food like in human agriculture. These ants, known as the fungus-growing ants do not grow the same crops as humans, but rather a type of fungus. The most specialized group of fungus-growing ants are the leaf-cutting ants, which use freshly cut leaves to grow their fungi. Because of this herbivore behavior, leaf-cutting ants are a damaging crop pest in the Neotropics. However, identifying species of leaf-cutting ants is still challenging because they display an enormous diversity of morphological and biological features. Overall, this prevents us from understanding their biology and effectively controlling their crop damage.
Traditionally, qualitative descriptions of morphological structures have been used to identify leaf-cutting ant species. However, using quantitative measurements of morphological features (morphometrics) to identify distinct species of leaf-cutting ants has yet to be explored. Using tools such as morphometrics is promising to make our species identification more accurate.
Therefore, this project investigates quantitative morphological differences between species of leaf-cutting ants.
The project addresses the following questions:
- Are there morphometric differences between species of leaf-cutting ants?
- Can morphometrics be used to identify species of leaf-cutting ants reliably?
- Projektzeitraum
- Sommersemester 2025
- Bewerbungszeitraum
- 01. bis 13.04.2025
- Durchführung
- semesterbegleitend
- Details zu Projektzeitraum und Durchführung
The project will be conducted at the University of Hohenheim during the summer semester of 2025. This project was first launched in the winter semester of 2024, and we have successfully assembled an image dataset of over 300 images, which are now ready for processing and data acquisition. The project will continue into the summer semester of 2025. The main activities will involve processing images of leaf-cutting ants and measuring morphological traits. The results of this project will be presented at the Humboldt Reloaded Conference in October 2025.
- Studienfach
-
Agrarbiologie
Agrarwissenschaften
Biologie - Betreuende
- Laura Daniela Mera-Rodriguez
- Institut
- Institut für Biologie (190) (Insect biodiversity)
- Sprache
- deutsch/englisch
- Teilnehmendenanzahl
- min. 1, max. 1
- Arbeitsaufwand
-
ca. 180 Stunden pro Teilnehmende:r
| 6
ECTS-Punkte
Arbeitsaufwand (Stunden und ggf. ECTS) sind ungefähre Angaben. Die tatsächlich vergebenen ECTS-Punkte ergeben sich aus der tatsächlich geleisteten Arbeit.
- Für dieses Projekt ist ein Motivationsschreiben des Studierenden erforderlich
- Projektart
- experimentell
- Lernziele
-
Die Teilnehmende lernen in diesem Projekt:
-Gain research experience conducting taxonomic studies about insects
-Develop an independent research project about insect biodiversity
-Learn to use current methods for insect identification
-Understand the relevance of biological collections for biodiversity research
-Learn how to image and measure insect specimens from biological collections
- Anmerkungen für Studierende
- Schlagworte
- biodiversity, taxonomy, insects