About | antscihub
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About antscihub

ASH is a hub for bridging the hobbyist ant keeping community and the scientific myrmecological community!

The hobbyist and the scientific community should work together!

Entomological outreach
  • Where will you find people more passionate about entomology than people who keep them as pets?​

  • Inspiring people to join the field is one and the same with the passion in the ant keeping hobby.​

  • By making the hobby more accessible, we're helping to preserve and expand the field of study.

  • As a result, many of our members are now going to school for entomology!

Citizen science
  • There is nearly zero communication between the hobbyist community and the scientific community.

  • As a result, scientifically relevant discoveries the hobbyist community has made are largely unrecorded.

  • Once a connection is established, down the line, experiments could be conducted at a large scale using many test colonies.

  • Alternatively, look outs and notices could be put in place for recording rare events and observations!

The potential of the ant keeping hobby is only as good as it's documentation!

Impact of the lack of documentation
  • Over 14,000 messages a day on the discord are not front facing on the web - this makes them unsearchable.

  • Even within discord itself, important information is swept away due to the nature of the chat.

  • Because advancement is undocumented, discoveries are often made several times before they take root​.

Benefits to ant keeping from the unhindered storage of information​
  • As information is documented, related discoveries can be easily accessed through filters and searches.

  • User evaluation and reviews allow for quick appraisal of the quality of content submitted.

  • Curated guides citing the compiling provided information break down the barrier of entry into the hobby.

  • Journaling provides a history of what has worked and what has not.

Hobbyist discovery as a catalyst for scientific advancement
  • Escalation of hobbyist discoveries through scientific channels can provide pilot data for academic study

  • Reports can serve as a canary for the spread of invasives

  • Hobbyist caresheets can provide guidelines for researchers raising laboratory colonies

Photography and videography are critical for broadening both communities!

  • Most people become interested in hobbies by seeing others enjoying them!

  • Unfortunately, even though everybody has a camera in their pocket now days, macro photography is still very inaccessible​.

  • To this end, if we're able to put macro photography skills in the hands of people passionate about ants, we collectively become more capable of expressing why we love this so much and sharing it with others.

Ants are awesome, and the ant keeping community is too ❤️

For me, building this community is about paying forward the patience, opportunity, and joy given to me by those who have helped me along my journey, and through ant keeping and entomology, I hope you're able to enjoy those, too 😁

- Kendrick Nakamura

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