Welcome to ADMAC
Project ADMAC will advance understanding of MesoAmerican ant diversity and biogeography through a program of advanced molecular systematics (using targeted enrichment of UCE loci and NextGen sequencing technology) and new field sampling in Costa Rica and Mexico. It is a continuation of the LLAMA project.
Project News:
Identification guide to Middle American Pheidole, with 57 new species:
Longino, J. T. 2019. Pheidole (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) of Middle American wet forest. Zootaxa 4599:1-126.
New results on leaf litter ants:
Branstetter, M. G., and J. Longino. 2019. UCE phylogenomics of New World Ponera Latreille (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) illuminates the origin and phylogeographic history of the endemic exotic ant P. exotica. Insect Systematics and Diversity 3:1-13.
25 July 2018. ADMAC sponsors a second BugFest at the Utah Museum of Natural History. 2188 visitors! In photos above, Michael Branstetter explains the wonders of bees, and Rodolfo Probst introduces a budding entomologist to live ant colonies.
17 June 2018. Well, the project has been active over the last two years, but we haven't kept up much with this website. But here is an Ecography blog post, from a new paper that summarizes elevational diversity patterns for leaf litter ants across all of Middle America. Longino, J. T. and Branstetter, M. G. (2018), The truncated bell: an enigmatic but pervasive elevational diversity pattern in Middle American ants. Ecography. Accepted Author Manuscript. . doi:10.1111/ecog.03871
15 August 2016. ADMAC-Mexico involved six weeks of productive field and lab work in Mexico. See a photo report here.
24 August 2015. We are back from this year's field work in Costa Rica, and all was a great success. You can see a photo report here. The expedition to Cerro Platano was made possible by a grant from the National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration.
11 September 2014. New Faircloth, Branstetter et al. paper on UCE's appears! Welcome news that UCE's not just for vertebrates any more; work great for Hymenoptera. Ref: Faircloth, B. C., M. G. Branstetter, N. D. White, and S. G. Brady. 2014. Target enrichment of ultraconserved elements from arthropods provides a genomic perspective on relationships among Hymenoptera. Molecular Ecology Resources. doi: 10.1111/1755-0998.12328.
8 August 2014. ADMAC is up and running! PostDoc Michael Branstetter is now settled in the Longino lab and is busy launching the UCE library preparation protocol, as well as analyzing his preliminary UCE data generated at the Smithsonian. The first publication that directly benefited from ADMAC just appeared, based on field sampling carried out during the LLAMA project (Longino, J. T., M. G. Branstetter, and R. K. Colwell. 2014. How ants drop out: ant abundance on tropical mountains. PLoS ONE 9:e104030).