About us
Welcome to Ant Lab PVD!
We’re a group of students and faculty based at Providence College who are conducting research and promoting community engagement focused on the comparative physiology, collective behavior, and natural history of ants.
Follow our adventures and take a look at some of our work up close with ants on instagram @antlabpvd.
View some of the videos in our AntLabPVD Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@antlabpvd
Interested in joining the lab?
If you are interested in exploring community engagement and research at the interface of physiology, ecology, and behavior, please join our group! Students from all majors and with all career goals are welcome, including future biologists, journalists, artists, engineers, nurses, musicians, doctors, authors, designers, psychologists, teachers, psychiatrists, economists, historians, chemists, physicists, museum professionals, athletes, mathematicians, and philosophers. We strive to have a diverse lab environment and welcome potential students regardless of race, religion, gender identification, sexual orientation, age, or disability status. As long as you are a creative thinker who is respectful to others, you are welcome here. Most students start by signing up for the BIO 395 Research course.
How to find us
We are members of the Department of Biology at Providence College, and our lab space is located in the new Science Complex, in Albertus Magnus Hall, Room 02-11.
- 1 Cunningham Square, Providence, RI 02918, USA
- http://www.lovetheants.org
- jwaters2@providence.edu
- (401)865-2682
Lab Photos
Photo of one of our lab posters at the annual SICB meeting, with Kaylee, Ioulia, and Santiago!
Looking for ants at the 2022 Rhode Island Natural History Survey’s Bioblitz.
Photo of our group including Kylie Taylor, Sami Martin, Sara Filler, Dr. Jane, and high school interns during the 2023 Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium at the University of Rhode Island.
Eno, Sami, and Jane collecting needle ants on campus.
Our big group at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology!
Photo of Diraliz and Justin, identifying ants in our old lab when it was in the basement!
Dr. Bespalova and lab members at The Abbey after the end of the semester in Spring 2024!
Students collecting Brachyponera chinensis beside McDermott Hall.
Photo of some of the buttons we make to hand out, with the city of Providence in the background.
We’re eagerly anticipating the day Trachymyrmex septentrionalis makes its way to the Pine Barrens of Rhode Island. Not yet… but maybe soon!
Jane and Skyler collecting ants at the Bioblitz in Glocester, RI.
Dr. Kuai Shen sharing a special invited lecture on decolonizing myrmecology at the RISD Nature Lab.
The winter (or false honeypot) ant, Prenolepis imparis.
Sami and Kylie ready to collect ants outside the Science Central tent at the annual bioblitz.
A trap-jaw ant found in Rhode Island, Strumigenys!
Students from the lab presenting a poster at the annual summer research conference at URI, “Hot Flies and Needle Ants.”
Dr. Taylor Hart and Dr. Jane looking at ants together in the lab.
In 2019 we were lucky to participate in a Bioblitz at Walden Pond that was also celebrating E. O. Wilson’s birthday, and the ants of course, too! So we made a poster of all the different ants we found there.
The talented biologist and artist Meredith Willmott designed our lab logo featuring three interacting needle ants, Brachyponera chinensis:
