Brian L Fisher

Brian L Fisher
California Academy of Sciences · Department of Entomology

PhD

About

453
Publications
227,822
Reads
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Citations
Introduction
My research focuses on leveraging new technologies and tools to discover, document, and understand the diversity on earth and ensure these results are available and used immediately for conservation action. I created the annual Ant Course in 2001 (14 courses in 8 countries, 402 students from 53 countries), AntWeb.org in 2002 (world's largest online database on ants), and the Madagascar Biodiversity Center in 2004 (Museum in Antananarivo dedicated to biodiversity, conservation and education).
Additional affiliations
January 2004 - December 2014
University of California, Berkeley
Position
  • Entomology 147-3
Description
  • Annual Course taught as Adjunct Professor, Division of Organisms & Environment in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management
January 2000 - December 2014
California Academy of Sciences
Position
  • Ant Course
Description
  • Annual Ant Course taught around the world: http://research.calacademy.org/ent/courses/ant
January 2000 - August 2016
California Academy of Sciences
Position
  • Curator of Entomology and Patterson Scholar of Science and Sustainability

Publications

Publications (453)
Article
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Background Army ants are dominant invertebrate predators in tropical and subtropical terrestrial ecosystems. Their close relatives within the dorylomorph group of ants are also highly specialized predators, although much less is known about their biology. We analyzed molecular data generated from 11 nuclear genes to infer a phylogeny for the major...
Article
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The monophyletic group of myrmicine ant genera related to Eutetramorium is described and its taxonomy is documented. The group is endemic in Madagascar and contains five genera: Eutetramorium Emery, 1899 (3 species, 1 of which is new); Malagidris nom. n., a replacement name for Brunella Forel, 1917, junior homonym of Brunella Smith, G.W. 1909 (Crus...
Article
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The role of DNA barcoding as a tool to accelerate the inventory and analysis of diversity for hyperdiverse arthropods is tested using ants in Madagascar. We demonstrate how DNA barcoding helps address the failure of current inventory methods to rapidly respond to pressing biodiversity needs, specifically in the assessment of richness and turnover a...
Article
Ants are the world's most diverse and ecologically dominant eusocial organisms. Resolving the phylogeny and timescale for major ant lineages is vital to understanding how they achieved this success. Morphological, molecular, and paleontological studies, however, have presented conflicting views on early ant evolution. To address these issues, we ge...
Article
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Globally, priority areas for biodiversity are relatively well known, yet few detailed plans exist to direct conservation action within them, despite urgent need. Madagascar, like other globally recognized biodiversity hot spots, has complex spatial patterns of endemism that differ among taxonomic groups, creating challenges for the selection of wit...
Preprint
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We present the data from the Insect Biome Atlas project (IBA), characterizing the terrestrial arthropod faunas of Sweden and Madagascar. Over 12 months, weekly Malaise trap samples were collected at 203 locations within 100 sites in Sweden and at 50 locations within 33 sites in Madagascar; this was complemented by soil and litter samples from each...
Article
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The field cricket, Gryllus madagascarensis, is a sustainable and nutritious food resource that has the potential to mitigate global malnutrition. Feeds provided to this cricket can influence its growth parameters, nutritional content, and the cost of raising it for food. The current study aimed to evaluate the effects of feeds formulated from weeds...
Article
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The males of the family Formicidae of the Malagasy region, including the islands of the southwest Indian Ocean (Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, Comoros, and Seychelles) are reviewed. A male-based synopsis of each subfamily and genera are provided. A richly illustrated male-based key to the eight subfamilies and 72 genera for which males are known a...
Preprint
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Modern DNA-based biodiversity surveys result in massive-scale data, including up to millions of species, of which most are rare. Making the most of such data for inference and prediction requires modelling approaches that can relate species occurrences to environmental and spatial predictors, while incorporating information about taxonomic or phylo...
Article
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Morphometric analyses of male genitalia are routinely used to distinguish genera and species in beetles, butterflies, and flies, but are rarely used in ants, where most morphometric analyses focus on the external morphology of the worker caste. In this work, we performed linear morphometric analysis of the male genitalia to distinguish Monomorium a...
Article
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Fungi are among the most diverse and ecologically important kingdoms in life. However, the distributional ranges of fungi remain largely unknown as do the ecological mechanisms that shape their distributions1,2. To provide an integrated view of the spatial and seasonal dynamics of fungi, we implemented a globally distributed standardized aerial sam...
Preprint
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While some relationships in phylogenomic studies have remained stable since the era of Sanger sequencing, many challenging nodes elude resolution, even with genome-scale data. As early studies grappled with random error and insufficient information, incongruence or lack of resolution in phylogenomics is generally associated with inadequate modeling...
Article
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The more insects there are, the more food there is for insectivores and the higher the likelihood for insect-associated ecosystem services. Yet, we lack insights into the drivers of insect biomass over space and seasons, for both tropical and temperate zones. We used 245 Malaise traps, managed by 191 volunteers and park guards, to characterize year...
Article
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Cricket Frass Fertilizer (CFF) was tested for its efficiency and potential as a fertilizer on the growth of green beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) in central Madagascar from April 2020 to October 2020. We grew green beans experimentally for 93 days with seven different fertilizer treatments: NPK 200 kg/ha (0.47 g of N/plant), GUANOMAD (guano from bat)...
Article
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Gryllus bimaculatus (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) is widely considered an excellent nutrient source for food and feed. Despite its economic importance, there is limited information on the impact of temperature on the bionomics of this cricket to guide its effective and sustainable mass production in its geographical range. The biological parameters of G....
Article
The article is the second in a series of catalogues of ant type specimens from the collection of V. O. Karawajew, stored at the Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (SIZK, Kiev). It includes data on 214 type specimens of 45 taxa of the subfamily Dolichoderinae, collected from around the world and describe...
Chapter
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We present the results of a spatial analysis of available ant distribution records for Angola and Namibia, identifying those species that occur within the highlands and escarpments in these countries. Within this region we document 36 described species and 78 morphospecies, including several potentially undescribed species. From the data available,...
Chapter
Full-text available
We present the results of a spatial analysis of available ant distribution records for Angola and Namibia, identifying those species that occur within the highlands and escarpments in these countries. Within this region we document 36 described species and 78 morphospecies, including several potentially undescribed species. From the data available,...
Article
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The genus Ponera includes over 60 extant species worldwide. These tiny, endogeic predator ants are predominantly distributed in the Indomalaya and Australasia regions, with a few additional Holarctic species. Herein, we explore and describe the diversity of the Malagasy Ponera fauna through an integrative taxonomic approach. We obtained our morphol...
Article
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Termites host diverse communities of gut microbes, including many bacterial lineages only found in this habitat. The bacteria endemic to termite guts are transmitted via two routes: a vertical route from parent colonies to daughter colonies and a horizontal route between colonies sometimes belonging to different termite species. The relative import...
Article
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The male of the myrmicine genus Erromyrma is described for the first time on the basis of two specimens of Erromyrma latinodis (Mayr, 1872) collected in northern Madagascar. We used COI barcoding to confirm the identification of the male specimens as conspecific with Erromyrma latinodis . We provide an illustrated male-based key to the four Myrmici...
Article
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Madagascar is home to many endemic plant and animal species owing to its ancient isolation from other landmasses. This unique fauna includes several lineages of termites, a group of insects known for their key role in organic matter decomposition in many terrestrial ecosystems. How and when termites colonised Madagascar remains unknown. In this stu...
Article
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Unprecedented technological advances in digitization and the steadily expanding open-access digital repositories are yielding new opportunities to quickly and efficiently measure morphological traits without transportation and advanced/expensive microscope machinery. A prime example is the AntWeb.org database, which allows researchers from all over...
Article
The collection of Volodymyr Opanasovych Karawajew, stored at the Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (SIZK, Kiev), is one of the richest ant collections of the world. It contains more than 20,000 dry mounted specimens, collected mostly in Southeast Asia and the Palaearctic, as well as in the Afrotropics,...
Article
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Organisms use color to serve a variety of biological functions, including camouflage, mate attraction and thermoregulation. The potential adaptive role of color is often investigated by examining patterns of variation across geographic, habitat and life‐history gradients. This approach, however, presents a data collection trade‐off whereby research...
Article
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Madagascar's biota is hyperdiverse and includes exceptional levels of endemicity. We review the current state of knowledge on Madagascar's past and current terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity by compiling and presenting comprehensive data on species diversity, endemism, and rates of species description and human uses, in addition to presenting...
Article
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Madagascar's unique biota is heavily affected by human activity and is under intense threat. Here, we review the current state of knowledge on the conservation status of Madagascar's terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity by presenting data and analyses on documented and predicted species-level conservation statuses, the most prevalent and relevan...
Article
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The West-Palearctic region is a diversity hotspot for the ant genus Aphaenogaster. Species in this region are characterized by high morphological variation, which has led to their subdivision into different infrageneric groups. The very first classification in three subgenera, dated 1915, was gradually replaced by eight species-groups. To probe the...
Chapter
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Preprint
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The male of myrmicine genus Erromyrma is described for the first time on the basis of two male specimens of Erromyrma latinodis collected in northern Madagascar. Moreover, CO1 barcoding confirmed the identification of the male specimens as conspecific with Erromyrma latinodis . We provide a male-based key to the four Myrmicinae tribes (Attini, Crem...
Article
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Invertebrates constitute the majority of animal species and are critical for ecosystem functioning and services. Nonetheless, global invertebrate biodiversity patterns and their congruences with vertebrates remain largely unknown. We resolve the first high-resolution (~20-km) global diversity map for a major invertebrate clade, ants, using biodiver...
Article
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Zanna tenebrosa (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae), a traditionally eaten phloem feeding planthopper known as sakondry, has received recent attention for its farming potential; these insects have been successfully cultivated on bean plants in remote, rural communities that depend on natural resources for their food security, without increasing the loss of loc...
Article
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Termites are major decomposers in terrestrial ecosystems and the second most diverse lineage of social insects. The Kalotermitidae form the second-largest termite family and are distributed across tropical and subtropical ecosystems, where they typically live in small colonies confined to single wood items inhabited by individuals with no foraging...
Article
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The Camponotus subgenus Myrmosaga subgen. rev. from the Malagasy region is revised based on analysis of both qualitative morphological characters and morphometric traits. The multivariate analysis used the Nest Centroid (NC)-clustering method to generate species hypotheses based on 19 continuous morphological traits of minor workers. The proposed s...
Article
The evolution of eusociality has allowed ants to become one of the most conspicuous and ecologically dominant groups of organisms in the world. A large majority of the current ∼14,000 ant species belong to the formicoids,¹ a clade of nine subfamilies that exhibit the most extreme forms of reproductive division of labor, large colony size,² worker p...
Article
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Background The Malagasy Region, one of the top megadiversity regions, hosts one of the highest numbers of endemic and threatened organisms on earth. One of the most spectacular examples of ant radiation on the island has occurred in the hyperdiverse genus Pheidole . To this date, there are 135 described Madagascan Pheidole divided into 16 species-g...
Article
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Global socioeconomic systems exacerbate disparities that leave a disturbing proportion of the human population malnourished, making conventional food sources such as animal livestock unsustainable at global scales. Edible insects have the potential to solve both malnourishment and the unsustainability of conventional livestock agriculture. The sust...
Article
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The subgenus Mayria of the genus Camponotus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) is revised. The subgenus is endemic to Madagascar where it occupies a broad range of habitats, from deciduous and dry forest to rainforest. A taxonomic review is provided of this subgenus, integrating multiples lines of evidence including qualitative morphology and quantitative m...
Article
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Swidden agriculture is a widespread subsistence farming method in the tropics, which is being intensified as human populations grow. This study is the first to investigate the impacts of land degradation from swidden upon ant species (both native and introduced) across the full degradation gradient, from forest, to tree fallows, to shrub fallows, t...
Article
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Ants, an ecologically successful and numerically dominant group of animals, play key ecological roles as soil engineers, predators, nutrient recyclers, and regulators of plant growth and reproduction in most terrestrial ecosystems. Further, ants are widely used as bioindicators of the ecological impact of land use. We gathered information of ant sp...
Preprint
Full-text available
Madagascar is home to many endemic plant and animal species owing to its ancient isolation from other landmasses. This unique fauna includes several lineages of termites, a group of insects known for their key role in organic matter decomposition in many terrestrial ecosystems. How and when termites colonised Madagascar remains unknown. In this stu...
Article
Full-text available
This study describes the worker and queen castes of the Neotropical ponerine Corrieopone nouragues gen. nov. , sp. nov. , an ant from the tropical rainforest in French Guiana. Worker morphology of the taxon is compared with those of other Ponerinae and the similarities between them are discussed, refining the definition of character states for some...
Preprint
Full-text available
Termites are major decomposers of organic matter in terrestrial ecosystems and the second most diverse lineage of social insects. The Kalotermitidae, the second-largest termite family, are widely distributed across tropical and subtropical ecosystems, where they typically live in small colonies confined to single wood items inhabited by individuals...
Article
Full-text available
Forests, and the vertebrate species within them, are irreplaceable sources of food and nutrition for millions of people living in areas of high biodiversity. Unfortunately, many of these forests are being cleared for agriculture, and many animals are threatened with extinction from unsustainable hunting. Forest clearing and the hunting of threatene...
Article
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Aim A crucial step to protecting biodiversity is assessing species diversity and endemism. We delineate spatial patterns of diversity in Malagasy ants on a phylogenetic and taxonomic level to identify centers of diversity and endemism, and evaluate the ‘museum vs. cradle’ hypothesis with regard to ant endemism. Location Madagascar. Taxon Ants, ge...
Article
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Background Madagascar is famous for its extremely rich biodiversity; the island harbors predominantly endemic and threatened communities meriting special attention from biodiversity scientists. Continuing ongoing efforts to inventory the Malagasy ant fauna, we revise the species currently placed in the myrmicine genus Aphaenogaster Mayr. One specie...
Cover Page
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Vol. 19(3) April 2021. PLoS Biol 19(3): ev19.i03. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pbio.v19.i03
Article
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Madagascar, one of the top megadiversity regions, hosts one of the highest numbers of endemic and threatened organisms on earth. One of the most spectacular examples of ant radiation on the island has occurred in the hyperdiverse genus Pheidole. To this date, there are 117 described Madagascan Pheidole divided into 16 species-groups, and 97% of the...
Article
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The ant fauna of the State of Qatar is reviewed based on collected material and literature. In total, 23 species, belonging to 12 genera and four subfamilies, were reported from the country. Given that Messor arenarius diabolus Santschi, 1938 is endemic in Egypt, and it was recorded by mistake in Qatar, we excluded it from the country faunal list....
Article
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• Morphometric research is being applied to a growing number and variety of organisms. Discoveries achieved via morphometric approaches are often considered highly transferable, in contrast to the tacit and idiosyncratic interpretation of discrete character states. The reliability of morphometric workflows in insect systematics has never been a sub...
Article
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The discovery in the Netherlands in a shipping container of the ant Monomorium sahlbergi Emery, 1898, a species similar to the invasive pharaoh ant M. pharaonis (Linnaeus, 1758), led to a quest to better define the distribution of this species, which was initially obscure due to uncertain specimen identifications. Here it is shown that M. sahlbergi...
Article
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The present study represents a taxonomic revision of the P. bessonii species-group from Madagascar. Eighteen members of this group are recognized and described, and an illustrated identification key to this group is also presented. One name is raised to species level: P. decollata Forel, 1892 stat. nov. We also redescribe worker castes and designat...
Article
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Species delimitation offered by DNA-based approaches can provide important insights into the natural history and diversity of species, but the cogency of such processes is limited without multigene phylogenies. Recent attempts to barcode various Solenopsidini ant taxa (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Myrmicinae), including the thief ant Solenopsis saudien...
Article
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The present study represents a taxonomic revision of the Pheidole sikorae species group from Madagascar. Forty-four members of this group are recognised and described, and an illustrated identification key to this group is also presented. One species is raised to species level: P. litigiosa Forel, 1892 stat. nov. Pheidole veteratrix angustinoda For...
Article
A basic expectation of evolution by natural selection is that species morphologies will adapt to their ecological niche. In social organisms, this may include selective pressure from the social environment. Many non-ant parasites of ant colonies are known to mimic the morphology of their host species, often in striking fashion [1, 2], indicating th...
Article
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The present study represents an introduction to the revision of Pheidole Westwood, 1839 from Madagascar. Sixteen species groups are established, of which eleven are revised below, and illustrated identification keys to species groups and species of groups revised in this monograph are presented. Two species are raised to species level: Pheidole pet...
Article
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Madagascar has a long history of using Orthoptera as food and feed. Our understanding of the biological diversity of this resource, its contemporary use, and its future potentials in Madagascar is extremely limited. The present study contributes basic knowledge of the biological diversity and local uses of edible Orthoptera in Malagasy food culture...