McGill University
Ph.D. candidate
Supervisor: Ehab Abouheif
Start: 2019-09-01
End: 2024-09-01

Project

The evolutionary and developmental mechanisms underlying origins of wing polypheniesm in ants
The shift from solitary to social living marks one of the events considered as a 'major evolutionary transition'. As in the case with social insects (e.i., ants, wasps, bees), the colony works in concert to forage, survive, and reproduce. This shift to sociality, at least in the case of ants, is largely attributed to the loss of wings in the workers and thus eliminating dispersal. My project investigates the developmental mechanisms behind wing loss in early-branching ant lineages and its consequences on the evolution of eusociality in ants.

Keywords

development, evolution, eusociality, Ants, polyphenism

Publications

1- Resilience to disturbance is a cross‐scale phenomenon offering a solution to the disturbance paradox
Hanna, L., A. L. Kissick, E. McCroskey, J. D. Holland
2019 Ecosphere