Antkey
Welcome. Antkey is a community resource for the identification of invasive, introduced and commonly intercepted ant species from across the globe. You can register for an account to contribute to the site, visit the forum to discuss topics related to introduced ants and site development, and you can also check out the blog for the latest updates.
Lucid Key | identify specimens
Taxa | explore taxon pages
Checklists | browse species lists
Media | search for images
Videos | watch video clips of ants
Glossary | learn morphological terms
Literature | find relevant literature
Community | discuss & contribute
To search for species or glossary terms use the search bar above and select Taxonomy.
Images below are not formatted for this front page template. If one catches your eye filter through the media gallery or copy the caption and paste into the search bar (best to surround search terms with "quotation marks").
Recent Blog entries
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A new paper proposes a novel method for automated screening of the Red Imported Fire Ant.
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New modules for Google Scholar and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) have been added to the Antkey site. Now when users go to taxon pages and click on the 'literature' tab, dynamic search results for that species from Google Scholar and BHL will be presented at the bottom of the page.
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A new paper on how Wasmannia auropunctata causes increases in crop pests in Solomon Island subsistence gardens.
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James Wetterer continues his excellent series on tramp ants with the samsum or sword ant, Pachycondyla sennaarensis." The species has not been reported in North America, but it sounds like it should be on the watch list.
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Go to a species page, click the media tab, and you'll now see all the Antweb specimen images for that species with a link to the original specimen page (e.g. http://antkey.org/taxonomy/term/4807/media). One great thing about the Drupal-driven Scratchpads platform is that developers can contribute custom 'modules' that can plug in to the core code..
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Antweb and Antwiki both have some excellent content, including species pages, maps, specimen images and literature. In order to make end-users aware of these pages, I added a new field in the taxon description content type called 'external links'. Now when the description tab is opened for a given species, links to that species respective pages on Antweb and Antwiki appear...
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The glossary module has been updated to allow multiple thumbnail images per term to be displayed, and for the thumbnails to link to colorboxes. I'm still working on getting the colorboxes to display additional metadata such as the description and keywords...
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Specimens with associated georeferenced location nodes are now dynamically mapped on the species pages. The mapping feature of Scratchpads is very nice. The Google maps are elegant, and the placemarks for specimen localities display nicely. The different colors bring focus to each locality, and the 'cluster placemarks' show regions where high densities of specimens have been recorded. Clicking on these cluster icons will zoom you in close enough to where individual placemarks or (additional cluster placemarks) segregate from each other...
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A major breakthrough took place today on the glossary illustrations. I was able to successfully import all the relevant media files into the glossary taxonomy. As of today, there are 436 glossary terms, of which 349 are illustrated.
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I put together some of the current and future development plans for the site in a new 'development plan' forum. Partly this was to demonstrate the work that can still be done, and partly this was just to have a place to organize and keep track of development priorities. I'm not convinced the forum is the best place for it, but until we think of something better, it will have to do. Here's the plan thus far.