Lab News

1. ✦  Corrie Moreau (PI) and Charles Bell (University of New Orleans) publish a paper in Evolution testing the “museum” versus “cradle” tropical diversity hypotheses in ants and is featured on Nature (April 2013): http://www.nature.com/news/why-the-tropics-are-an-evolutionary-hotbed-1.12846
   

1. ✦  Ben Rubin (graduate student) was awarded a NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG). - March 2013
   

1. ✦  Corrie Moreau (PI), Brian Wray (research assistant), Jesse Czekanski-Moir (former lab member), and Ben Rubin (graduate student) publish a paper on insect preservatives for DNA and host-associated microbes in Invertebrate Systematics. - March 2013
   

1. ✦  Field Museum Women in Science (FMWIS) group is launched (http://fieldmuseum.org/explore/field-museum-women-science). - March 2013
   

1. ✦  Ben Rubin (graduate student) was awarded a one year Field Museum Brown Family Graduate Student Fellowship. - March 2013
   

1. ✦  Steffi Kautz (postdoc), Ben Rubin (graduate student), Jacob Russell (Drexel University), and Corrie Moreau (PI) published a paper in Applied and Environmental Microbiology titled “Surveying the microbiome of ants: Comparing 454 pyrosequencing with traditional methods to uncover bacterial diversity”. - January 2013
   

1. ✦  Lead by Jacob Russell of Drexel University, Corrie Moreau recently co-authored a paper published in PLOS ONE titled “A veritable menagerie of heritable bacteria from ants, butterflies, and beyond: Broad molecular surveys and a systematic review”. - December 2012
   

1. ✦  Research assistant, Gracen Brilmyer, had a paper published in DNA Barcodes based on work she was involved with during her time at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. - December 2012
   

1. ✦  Steffi Kautz (postdoc) and Ben Rubin (graduate student) attended the Entomological Society of America meeting in Knoxville, TN and presented their research. - November 2012
   

1. ✦  The Moreau Lab hosted the second annual Chicago Area Joint Ant Lab Meeting.  Over 30 ant biologists from 10 institutions and 5 states came together to present research talks and share ideas on advancing ant science. - October 2012
   

1. ✦  Graduate student, Max Winston, and colleagues had a paper published in Ecological Entomology “Sodium-specific foraging by leafcutter ant workers” from research completed during a social insect OTS course in Costa Rica. - October 2012
   

1. ✦  Max Winston (graduate student) was awarded a one year U.S. Department of Education GAANN fellowship from the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago. - August 2012
   

1. ✦  The lab visited Costa Rica (Área de Conservación Guanacaste - ACG) to conduct fieldwork for ant-microbe research.  - June 2012 
   

1. ✦  Postdoc, Steffi Kautz, has a paper published “Host Plant Use by Competing Acacia-Ants: Mutualists Monopolize While Parasites Share Hosts” in PLoS ONE - May 2012
   

1. ✦  Corrie Moreau has finally joined the world of Twitter - May 2012.  Follow me: @CorrieMoreau
   

1. ✦  Graduate student, Ben Rubin, had a paper published “Inferring phylogenies from RAD sequence data” in PLoS ONE - April 2012
   

1. ✦  Undergraduate intern, Sara Zufan, recently graduated from DePaul University and was accepted to the highly competitive Chicago Teaching Fellows program for biology - March 2012. 
   

1. ✦  Corrie Moreau attended the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC13) meeting in Shenzhen, China and gave a talk “Exploring the host-associated microbiome of ant species” - March 2012
   

1. ✦  The Moreau lab traveled to the Entomological Society of America meetings in Reno, NV.  Presentations were made by Max Winston (graduate student - poster), Ben Rubin (graduate student - talk), Tim O’Connor (former undergraduate - talk), Steffi Kautz (postdoctoral researcher - talk), and Corrie Moreau (PI - talk) - November 2011
   

1. ✦  Corrie Moreau gave an invited Keynote (Plenary) address at the Australasian Evolution Society meetings in Queensland, Australia - September 2011
   

1. ✦  Max Winston, new Ph.D. graduate student, joins the lab - September 2011
   

1. ✦  Lynika Strozier, summer intern, was accepted to the competitive University of Chicago Post-Baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) - July 2011
   

1. ✦  Ben Rubin successively advanced to Ph.D. candidacy after presenting his proposed dissertation research to his thesis committee (Corrie Moreau, Richard Ree, Justin Borevitz, and Yoav Gilad) and a public audience as part of the University of Chicago’s Natural History Seminar series - May 2011
   

1. ✦  Jessica De Smet, post-undergrad intern in the lab, is accepted to a master’s degree program for the Fall of 2011 at the University of Oklahoma - May 2011
   

1. ✦  Tim O’Connor, former lab intern and research assistant, was recently announced as the winner of the 2011 William L. and Ruth D. Nutting Research Grant for termite research from NAS/IUSSI based on independent research Tim started in the Moreau lab - April 2011
   

1. ✦  Alexandra Westrich, research assistant, and Corrie Moreau are interviewed by American Scientist for the online and print magazine about their work with The Romance of Ants exhibit - April 2011
   

1. ✦  Steffi Kautz, postdoctoral research, and Daniel Ballhorn, research associate, become the proud parents of a new baby boy, Jasper - April 2011
   

1. ✦  Corrie Moreau and Dr. Jacob Russell (Drexel University) are awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) - DEB Population and Community Ecology Cluster grant.  Three years of funding was awarded to support “Inferring bacterial roles in the evolution of trophic level across the ants” - March 2011
   

1. ✦  A paper titled “Biogeography and morphological evolution in a Pacific island ant radiation” by Eli Sarnat (UIUC) and Corrie Moreau is published in Molecular Ecology - January 2011
   

1. ✦  Daniel Ballhorn, research associate, Steffi Kautz, postdoctoral researcher, and colleagues publish a paper in the Journal of Ecology titled “Genetic and environmental interactions determine plant defences against herbivores” - January 2011
   

1. ✦  In collaboration with colleagues at Drexel University and Harvard University, Corrie Moreau was a co-author on a recent publication in Applied and Environmental Microbiology titled “Army ants harbor host-specific clades of Entomoplasmatales bacteria” which also included the cover image - January 2011
   

1. ✦  The Moreau lab traveled to the Entomological Society of America meetings in San Diego.  Presentations were made by Sara Zufan (NSF REU undergraduate - poster), Ben Rubin (graduate student - talk), Tim O’Connor (former undergraduate - talk), Steffi Kautz (postdoctoral researcher - talk), and Corrie Moreau (PI - talk) - December 2010 
   

1. ✦  E.O. Wilson, one of Corrie Moreau's graduate advisors, visited the Moreau Lab at the Field Museum - November 2010
   

1. ✦  Corrie Moreau is interviewed on Chicago's Fox morning show about "The Romance of Ants" exhibit - September 2010
   

1. ✦  Steffi Kautz, postdoctoral researcher, and Corrie Moreau present talks at the IUSSI meetings in Copenhagen, Denmark - August 2010
   

1. ✦  "The Romance of Ants" public exhibit opens at the Field Museum - July 2010
   

1. ✦  Postdoctoral research, Steffi Kautz, and Corrie Moreau publish a meeting review of the EOL/GAP meeting held at the Field Museum in Myrmecological News online early - July 2010
   

1. ✦  Jesse Czekanski-Moir, research assistant, leaves the lab to begin graduate school at the University of Oklahoma - June 2010
   

1. ✦  Corrie Moreau presents a talk at the annual Evolution Meetings in Portland, Oregon - June 2010
   

1. ✦  As a former Miller Fellow, Corrie Moreau, was invited to attend the annual UC Berkeley Miller Symposium - June 2010
   

1. ✦  Postdoctoral researcher, Steffi Kautz, received a two-year postdoctoral fellowship from the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina to pursue research on bacteria in ants in the Moreau lab - April 2010
   

1. ✦  Graduate student, Ben Rubin, is awarded a three-year NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for his proposed work on acacia ants - April 2010
   

1. ✦  Postdoctoral researcher, Steffi Kautz, is awarded a one-year postdoctoral fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) - April 2010
   

1. ✦  Steffi Kautz, postdoctoral researcher, and colleagues publish a paper “Comparing responses of generalist and specialist herbivores to various cyanogenic plant features” in Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata - March 2010
   

1. ✦  Corrie Moreau was recently interviewed by Thomson Reuters for their ScienceWatch website feature focusing on a previously published article (Moreau et al. 2006 Science 312: 101–104) which Thomson Reuters considers “highly cited” - February 2010
   

1. ✦  Corrie Moreau was an invited speaker at the Symposium on Evolutionary Divergence Time at Rutgers University - January 2010
   

1. ✦  Recent work by Jake Russell, Corrie Moreau and colleagues on the bacterial community of ants was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (PNAS) - December 2009
   

1. ✦  Benjamin Rubin, graduate student, and Corrie Moreau presented their research at the Entomological Society of America meetings in Indianapolis, Indiana - December 2009
   

1. ✦  The Moreau Lab and EOL BioSynthesis Center host the Global Ant Project meeting in Chicago, IL - November 2009