Hello and welcome!
As long I can remember, I have been captivated by invertebrate animals of all forms: beetles, slugs, worms, crayfish, anemones… pretty much everything, but especially the insects and arachnids I encountered on an everyday basis. After one overambitious business venture I launched at the age of 7 (wasp nest removal services), and having no exposure to real taxonomy or insect science, I put my love of little arthropods on the back burner—that is, until college, when I discovered that training as a systematic entomologist was actually feasible.
Roughly a decade later, I am now a postdoctoral researcher at the Senckenberg Natural History Museum and Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany. Since joining the world of professional science, my interest has only deepened: the more I learn, the more I am awestruck by the vastness of biodiversity.
(c) Brandon Woo, Bugguide.net
My research focuses on a widespread, extremely common and yet poorly understood group of ants: the “pyramid ants,” genus Dorymyrmex. These ants are well-established throughout warm, dry regions of the Americas, important in their ecosystems, and they coexist well with humans. Nonetheless, there are many undescribed species of Dorymyrmex, even in places like California. Broadly speaking, I am 1) characterizing new and existing species so these ants have proper names and can be identified, and 2) uncovering how they have developed their fascinating “amphitropical” global distribution, in which diversity and density are highest outside, rather than within, the tropics.
My Dorymyrmex work is described in more detail on my research page.
A brief professional timeline
2026– : Assistant Professor of Biology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, USA. Starting in the 2026–27 academic year, I will be teaching invertebrate zoology, entomology, and intro biology. I’ll also be starting my own research lab to study ant evolution and taxonomy together with a team of undergraduate students. I’m so excited to teach research methods hands-on and watch my students develop their own biological fascinations. See you soon! 🔬
2024–26: Independent postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Terrestrial Zoology, Entomology III, at the Senckenberg Institute for Nature Research in Frankfurt am Main. I’m excited about this opportunity to return to Germany, where I spent a semester abroad in college as part of my German Studies major. Until the summer of ’26, I’ll be here wrapping up postdoctoral projects, learning population genomic methods (to study evolutionary processes operating within and between species), and building a strong foundation of data and project concepts for my research at Hope.
July–December 2023: A six-month tenure as a Visiting Scientist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. During this time, I polished my doctoral research for publication, formed new connections and collaborations with Hymenoptera (wasps, bees, and ants) research staff, and made use of the NMNH computing resources and insect collection, which includes several Dorymyrmex type specimens.
2017–23: Doctoral training with Dr. Philip Ward at the University of California – Davis. I jumped headfirst into entomology, macroevolution, and the wild world of myrmecology (ant science). The focus of my dissertation was the systematics and biogeography of the “pyramid ants” or “cone ants,” genus Dorymyrmex (Formicidae: Dolichoderinae). By determining the relationships between the major lineages and getting a head start on delimiting North American species, my work is starting to illuminate just how much diversity is contained in this poorly understood genus—and the work that needs to be done to characterize it.
2016–17: As a research intern in Dr. Prashant Sharma’s lab at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, I performed typical evo-devo lab technician duties, maintained colonies of arthropod model organisms (e.g., Gryllus bimaculatus, Oncopeltus fasciatus, Parasteatoda tepidariorum), and harvested insect embryos at various stages of development. I also learned fundamentals of evolutionary developmental biology such as cloning and RNAi. My independent research focus was the historical biogeography of the little-studied harvester (daddy long legs) family Assamiidae (Opiliones: Laniatores).
2012–16: During my undergraduate years at Macalester College (Saint Paul, MN), I joined Dr. Sarah Boyer’s lab researching the evolution and biogeography of Austropurcellia daddy long legs (arachnids, but not spiders!). We completed field work in the wet tropics of Queensland, Australia, and I learned lab methods back in Minnesota, including DNA extraction, Sanger sequencing, scanning electron microscopy, and statistical phylogenetics. I additionally curated the college’s insect collection and helped teach Biodiversity and Evolution. In 2016, I graduated cum laude with majors in Biology and German Studies.