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WKU Biology Students To Study
Insects In West Africa

October 25, 2004

Bowling Green, Ky. - Some Western Kentucky University biology students will travel to Ghana in West Africa next summer to study insects as a result of a WKU professor’s $403,000 federal grant. With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) over the next three years, Dr. Keith Philips will work in the field with teams of students and researchers from WKU and the University of Ghana.

The project will intensively survey insects from ecosystems and habitats in Ghana that are the most vulnerable in the world and are quickly vanishing.

"Our knowledge of insect diversity in this habitat is poor and this ecosystem is more threatened and is disappearing more quickly than most other global biodiversity hotspots," Dr. Philips said.

He and his students also will study the species of dung beetles and spider beetles, both of which include many species that have not yet been given names. Dung beetle ecology is also a focus of the project and knowledge of this group is useful to indicate overall ecosystem health.

The insects collected in Ghana will help to create a national insect collection there. A database cataloging the insects will also be created that will allow anyone with an internet connection to have access.

This will help scientists from all over the world study the insects that live in these poorly known and highly threatened forests and, Philips hopes, “lead to better protection of the irreplaceable natural heritage of biodiversity in the Upper Guinean forests of West Africa.”

Graduate and undergraduate students from both Western Kentucky University and the University of Ghana will do some of the follow-up research and will receive funding from the grant for their work.

For more information, contact Keith Philips at (270) 745-3419. More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.