How do non-native species fit into foodwebs? Our new paper in Ecology shows that native generalists (Scolopendra centipedes and Telfair's skinks) partition their diets with superabundant non-native ants, but also consume them! 📃 Available now 📃 🐜👀 esajournals.onlinelibrary.wi…

Double good news day: 2 more years of funding secured to research army ants 🐜 in Africa 🇬🇶, PLUS we completed a pilot Dorylus exclusion plot this week Super excited… let’s see if it works🤞 🔍

More super cool scenes from Dorylus: vid 1 shows driver ants at their nest 10 mins before a raid and vid 2 was taken 2m ahead of the raid front later on

Epic scenes of Dorylus living up to the legends - great first couple of days in the field!

Whilst this study has its limitations (check out the paper and supplementary), it's a clear corroboration that non-native ants are drivers rather than passengers of dramatic native biodiversity declines in invaded areas. 5/6

This pattern held when we reanalysed the data after pooling all effect sizes extracted from a single article in a single "community level" effect size (to account for non-independence of taxa in a community). 4/6

...and extracted richness (53 effect sizes) and abundance (153 effect sizes) data of local animal communities in paired sites with and without non-native ants. We found invasion by non-native ants approximately halved the diversity of local communities. 3/6

We extracted data from 46 articles studying relatively undisturbed natural systems around the world to isolate the effects of ant invasion (i.e. not much human activity, few other non-native species etc)... 2/6

Chuffed this chapter from my PhD is finally online!! 🙌😃🐜 Our meta-analysis quantifies the effect of non-native ants on local animal community diversity in multiple locations globally. Spoiler alert: non-native ants are PRETTY BAD 🧵 1/6 resjournals.onlinelibrary.wi…

Great to be back out in Mauritius sampling inverts on a @DurrellWildlife and @NHM_London collab. There's much island-hopping and insect catching to be done over the next few months! Very exciting. (Photos are from our recent trip to Gunner's Quoin - got back yesterday)

BONUS tweet from my post-sub walk up the moor. Look at that blend

Thesis submitted! Huge thanks to everyone that's been part of the journey. It's been a blast. INSECTS ROCK!

Kara Cook (@CookKara21), one of our fab students on the ecology field course this week, did a fantastic job finding and ID'ing this Nuctenea umbratica orbweb spider! Great to see engagement with spiders, insects and allied taxa!

Pre-breakfast stroll. Looking forward to #AntCourse lectures this morning!

Fantastic talk this afternoon by @Lou_A_Ashton, marking the first in-person @OnE_CardiffUni seminar for longer than I can remember! Really cool and inspiring science examined through the lens of entomology. Maybe cockroaches do rival ants in their coolness after all...

🚨 Only one month until the RES Student Forum 2022 Head over to the fab new RES website to register: bit.ly/3KlsD6d. Send us those abstracts. Submission deadline: Feb 3rd. The fab variant poster from the amazing @CharlieZoology! Temple of Peace never looked so good!