Hey, my name is Philipp Otto Hönle, but just call me Phil. I love everything about ants since I first started collecting them when I was 16 years old. My curiosity began during vacations in Croatia, where I would observe the exciting trails of Messor seed-harvesting ants. Barely two years later, my room was (to the anger of my parents!) stuffed with dozens of living ant colonies. My ongoing fascination for keeping ants brought me to science, and luckily the ant-famous Würzburg University accepted me as a student. There, I would study and proceed to do my bachelor thesis on the incredible behavior of the Matabele Ant Megaponera analis and consequently continued with my master about the fascinating interaction ecology of army ants.
Now, I’m doing my PhD at the TU Darmstadt under the supervision of Nico Blüthgen, and my field work is located in the super diverse Ecuador. My research is a lot of fun and spans across many ant topics, including their taxonomy, chemistry, natural history, and – most importantly – ecology.
If I’m not busy with doing
research on ants I love to take pictures of them, and I do enjoy traveling the
world to find the coolest ants!
If you enjoy my pictures and want to see more, check out my twitter @myrmecophil
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