written by Maggie Hartman and Alireza Shokoohi

During graduate school, a typical evening for Dr. Aidan Manubay (Fig. 1) included stalking colonies of hungry insects with disproportionately large mandibles in the tropical forests of Costa Rica and Panama. If this sounds like your ideal day, then you may want to consider studying the diverse and ever-fascinating army ant. Dr. Manubay, Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences at The George Washington University (jmanubay@gwu.edu), has been fervently asking questions about his favorite group of organisms, army ants, since his years as an undergraduate right here at the University of Maryland. ​​

written by: Kathleen Ciola Evans & Eva Perry 

UMD Department of Entomology Land Acknowledgement: 
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​The United Kingdom hosted the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland from October 31st through November 13th. Although some were hopeful that the world could come together on an agreement to mitigate climate change, many voices were left unheard during the symposium, including those of Indigenous groups. Their inclusion is particularly important because of the vulnerability of Indigenous lands to climate change and the potential model of sustainable land management that Indigenous groups could provide. Additionally, a significant amount of global biodiversity is concentrated in territories Indigenous Peoples managel. Ancestral and indigenous communities contribute next to zero toward carbon emissions, yet they are the most vulnerable communities to climate change2. Despite this, Indigenous perspectives on sustainable land and water management were mostly sidelined at the conference.