Laboratory of Molecular Ecology and Biodiversity

14/09/2026

Ciencia UNAM about invasive ants and our research.

La biología de la invasión avanza en la identificación de especies instaladas en territorio mexicano

12/09/2026

This week, Damian Villasenor represented our laboratory at the Czech Society for Ecology conference. He presented his research on insect diversity across Mexico, Panama and Papua New Guinea, highlighting how molecular tools can support large-scale biodiversity studies.
Congratulations, Damian, on your success in the best talk competition!

10/09/2026

Congratulations to Filip Mahdal on his master’s degree and successful thesis defence at Dept of Ecology, Palacký University Olomouc! 🎓🦋
Using DNA metabarcoding, Filip studied Lepidoptera along an elevational gradient in El Cielo, Mexico, where Neotropical and Nearctic faunas meet. He found strong species turnover and greater Nearctic representation at higher elevations. Average latitudinal ranges decreased with elevation, suggesting an inverse Rapoport pattern at the community level. His work also highlighted major gaps in taxonomic knowledge and DNA reference libraries: only 79 of 549 molecular taxonomic units could be identified to species. Well done, Filip!

05/09/2026

Huge congratulations to Adela Juranova on completing her Master’s studies and an excellent thesis defence at Palacký University Olomouc.

Adela investigated the diversity and distribution of Pheidole ants across Melanesia using thousands of specimens and DNA sequence data. Her findings suggest that mainland New Guinea is home to at least 240 Pheidole species, with fewer than 100 currently formally described.
She also found that species composition differs markedly even between nearby sites, and that even long-studied localities still harbour substantial undiscovered diversity.
Her thesis makes an important contribution to our understanding of this hyperdiverse ant genus in Melanesia—and highlights how much remains to be discovered. Well done, Adela!

28/05/2026

Ant Course 2026!

2026 Dates: October 12–22 Deadline to apply: 1 July 2026 Location: Colorado State University Todos Santos Center, Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico

19/03/2026

Trillions of insects embark, largely unnoticed, on epic journeys every year across mountain ranges, deserts and seas, and it is only now, as their numbers suffer huge declines, that scientists are tracking their movements

11/02/2026

While some people were still enjoying the winter holidays, our lab members Jakub Dubravec, Jakub Sidlik, and Damian Villasenor were already hard at work. Since early January, they’ve been based at the Natural History Museum Berlin for a month-long visit with colleagues from the Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery, learning how to use the biodiversity scanner and sequencing ants.

Thanks to this great collaboration, they sequenced 4,000+ ants from the South Pacific and produced new data for under-studied regions such as Bougainville, New Britain, and Guadalcanal.

09/02/2026

Some time ago, we published a study on Tapinoma ants, presenting a preliminary phylogeny of the genus and exploring the population history of the ghost ant Tapinoma melanocephalum, one of the most widely distributed ant species. It was a great collaboration with our colleagues in Utah, led by our PhD candidate Oscar Pérez.

A bit of background: A few years ago, while checking genetic data from Tapinoma ants we’d collected across New Guinea and the Indo-Pacific, we noticed a quiet problem: alongside the globally common ghost ant Tapinoma melanocephalum, there seemed to be a second, closely related species. Not surprising—these ants are tiny, with few obvious characters, and collections worldwide have routinely lumped “small pale Tapinoma” under one convenient name. DNA was less cooperative.
Our genomic results strongly supported a distinct sister species. Then Dr. B. Seifert and colleagues described Tapinoma pithecorum, which initially fit our findings, so we updated the manuscript and sent it to review. During the review process (and after exchanging material), it turned out the type specimen of T. pithecorum was an aberrant, unusually coloured individual of an already described species. So the actual new species had to be described again.
In other words, our review process lasted long enough for the taxonomy to change twice.
The species is now Tapinoma jandai—with the earliest known specimens collected in 2004 near Baitabag village, northeastern Papua New Guinea.

Takeaway: if you wait too long to publish, even an obscure little tropical ant can get published by someone else first. But if you wait even longer, the science may catch up, the taxonomy may get corrected… and the result might actually end up better.

Abstract. The ant genus Tapinoma Foerster, 1850 is a moderately diverse group (81 valid species) that occurs worldwide. It includes the tramp species T. me

09/02/2026

If you’re interested in ants, this recent article is a great, up-to-date introduction to ant systematics—plus it offers helpful ideas on what we should focus on next.

Abstract. The classification of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) has progressed in waves since the first 17 species were described by Linnaeus in the 1758 ed

22/09/2025

Post provided by Daniel Souto-Vilarós. I’m a molecular ecologist who currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utah, with a long-standing obsession with biodiversity. While …