Along with my field research, I also collaborate with John Pickering at the University of Georgia and others on www.discoverlife.org. One project we are working on is a web enabled matrix key to all of the ants of North America. This will be the first key to all of the species found in North America in 56 years (Creighton 1950). Currently we are in the process of producing high quality digital images of every described North American ant species. We use Automontage software and various other tools to image pinned type and other specimens across the country and I worked on the ants under Ted Schultz's care at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. This is a collaborative effort with Brian Fisher's lab at the California Academy of Sciences, and Stefan Cover at the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology to produce a standard, comprehensive ant image database, and share information and images among the three groups. In the last year this effort has expanded to the ants of many other parts of the world. The Discoverlife IdNatureguide is a matrix based key and will make a major advance in biodiversity studies, allowing people without extensive training in ant taxonomy or access to revisions and books, that are long out of print, to identify and report ant species. We presented the key to the ants of North America to E. O. Wilson as a birthday gift during a meeting in February 2005.
This is an example of my work at the Smithsonian. This is a Camponotus cerberulus. Click on a thumbnail to enlarge.
Northern State University 9/95-9/99 B.S. cum laude Biology
Georgetown University 9/00-10/02 M.S. Biology
Georgetown University 9/00-12/05 Ph.D. Biology
Selected Invitations, Honors and Fellowships, Presentations, Publications, and Websites:
2007 Ant specialist at the University of North Carolina's Mason Farm Bioblitz, Chapel Hill North Carolina, September
2007 Ant specialist at the Jug Bay Bioblitz, Patuxent Maryland, September
2007 Ant specialist at National Geographic's Rock Creek National Park Bioblitz, Washington D.C., July
2006 Ant specialist at the Potomac Gorge NPS Biioblitz in Glen Echo Maryland, June
2006 Invited to speak on the effects of imperfect sampling regimes and species patchiness on species estimators at the International Union for the Study of Social Insects 2006 Congress, Washington, DC, July 31st August 4th
2006 Featured in the documentary movie "On the Edge: The Potomac River Dyke Marsh" World premier at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. March 21st.
2005 "A new frontier for a very old science: Modern bioinformatics and database organization in taxonomy" guest lecturer for the Howard Hughes bioinformatics course at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
2005 "How to study & monitor life on Earth" at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) and the Heinz Center. Feb 21st and 22nd. http://www.discoverlife.org/pa/ev/me/2005dc/
"Studies on the ants, alien and native plants, and ant sampling methods in a U.S. National Park." presentation and defense of Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, Washington D.C., 1 December 2005
"Alien plants in an eastern riparian forest: is there an impact on ants and native plants?" presentation to the Washington Biologists' Field Club, Smithsonian National Zoological Park, Washington, D.C., 22 April 2005
"The Ants of Dyke Marsh Preserve: Are Alien Plants Changing the Native Ant Community?" Presentation to the Entomological Society of Washington, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C., 3 March 2005
"Using Coldfusion, Discoverlife.org, and the internet to monitor and identify species: Demonstrations of a literature database, a sampling event database, online matrix keys, and realtime mapping of species information online." Presentation to National Park Service employees from the Rock Creek Park and the Center for Urban Ecology, Rock Creek Park, Washington, DC, 11 February 2005
"Ant Community Changes Associated with Introduced Plant Species." poster presented at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation's 9th annual spring symposium on invertebrate conservation at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, 25-26 March 2004
Kjar, D. S. and E. M. Barrows. 2004. Arthropod Community Heterogeneity in a Mid-Atlantic Forest Highly Invaded by Alien Organisms. Banisteria. 24: 26-37
Kjar, D. S., and T. R. Suman. 2007. First records of invasion by the myrmecine Japanese Ant Vollenhovia emeryi W. M. Wheeler (Hymenoptera:Formicinae) in the United States. Proc. Ent. Soc. Wash. 109:596-604
Kjar, D. S. and E. M. Barrows. Alien- and native-plant correlations and environmental disturbances in a U.S. National Park. (in prep)
Kjar, D. S. An evaluation of species sampling efficacy using field studies and computer modeling. (in prep)
Kjar, D. S. The ant community of an Easter U.S. riparian deciduous forest. (in prep)
Kjar, D. S. Correlation of Native-ant-species incidence with alien-plant cover in a U.S. National Park forest. (in prep)
Smithsonian database of ant types and the Bill Brown Memorial Library.
This website is an online database of arthropod species caught or observed in the Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve. This database includes 29 species of Formicidae.
Barrows, E. M. and D. S. Kjar. 2004. Arthropods of Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, Virginia: A Searchable Online Database (ADMWPD). Website.http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/barrowse/nps/dmwp.cfm
I designed this website as an online, searchable collection of images and information on the biodiversity of the Washington, D.C., Area. It has over 2000 webpages, 5000 digital images, and many pages of information on local biota. This database is linked to the other databases produced by our lab, allowing images and information to be seamlessly integrated into species lists produced for the national park service. This website receives over 12,000 hits per month.
Barrows, E. M. and D. S. Kjar. 2004. Biodiversity Database of the Washington, D.C., Area (BDWA). Website. http://biodiversity.georgetown.edu
This website is an online searchable database of over 12,000 species found in an extensive and ongoing literature search funded by the National Park Service.
Barrows, E. M., D. S. Kjar, C. R. Bird, B. Q. Chung, T. Q. Chung, and M. R. Minor. 2004. Arthropods of the Washington, D.C., Area: A Searchable Online Database (AWDCAD). Website.
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/barrowse/nps/
|
