78: Ants w/ Aaron Fairweather!

Just the Zoo of Us

Ellen & Christian Weatherford

Science Communication, Pets & Animals, Zoology, Kids & Family, Nature, Wildlife Science, Animals, Science, Wildlife

4.8 • 595 Ratings

🗓️ 21 December 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Join Ellen and special guest, entomologist Aaron Fairweather, for a review of the industrious, conniving, world-conquering ants! In this episode, we discuss what makes ants so successful, the theatrical levels of drama going on under our feet every day, and as a special treat, a free idea for a D&D character.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody.
0:03.0	Hi, everybody. This is Ellen Weatherford. I'm here, as I always am, with just the zoo of us. And this
0:25.7	week, I have a brand new friend. And I'm really excited to introduce you all to. This is Aaron Fairweather.
0:30.8	Say hi, Aaron. Hey, everybody. I'm really excited, first of all, to talk ants with you today, because I've been
0:36.8	really hyped up about it.
0:38.5	But before we talk about ants, would you like to kind of introduce yourself to our friends a little bit?
0:43.8	Sure. So I am a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph. I study ants in agricultural systems.
0:51.8	So looking at their diversity, what they're doing to our like crops
0:56.3	and our food, and how we impact them through the use of things like pesticides. But I've always
1:02.1	been interested in tomology and insects in general. I grew up in a very small town in New
1:08.8	Brunswick, Canada, and would spend like days just gathering
1:13.7	up caterpillars and rearing them in my living room from as young as two years old. And so I quickly
1:20.4	got into working with insects at the New Brunswick Museum in high school. And from there, it just kind of
1:26.2	blossomed. Like, I just kept pursuing it. It happened that there was a gap in knowledge on ants in the province at the time. And so that's how I got into ants. But I've always just had a passion for entomology in general. Oh, man. That's really exciting, like that there just happened to be something waiting for you that was like, ooh, there's something we don't know about ants.
1:46.3	Yeah, it was really exciting, actually, because, yeah, it started there in grade nine.
1:50.4	And then during that summer, the curator was like, you know, we know nothing.
1:55.2	And we're starting this big biodiversity assay of the province.
1:58.3	Like, what is found in the province?
1:59.7	We know absolutely nothing
2:00.9	about the ants. And it just so happens at the same time in Maine, USA, that there was a taxonomy
2:08.4	course, so an ant identification class going on. And so they sent me there. I did the course,
2:14.3	and then I came back and used all that. I learned to identify all the ants in the province.
	...

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