Meet Rodolfo da Silva Probst
Assistant Professor of Insect Biology
Meet the newest member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty: Rodolfo da Silva Probst, assistant professor of insect biology.
Probost joined the faculty in March and is based at 394 Briggs Hall.
His research interests include evolutionary biology, systematics and phylogenomics, and insect biodiversity, with a particular focus on ants and ant-plant symbioses. His recent work "integrates natural history and genome-scale sequencing approaches to investigate patterns of diversification, divergence timing, and trait evolution."
Probst holds a bachelor's degree in biology (2021), with a minor in marine biology, from Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP-CLP), São Vicente, São Paulo, Brazil; a master's degree (2015) in systematics, animal taxonomy and biodiversity, from the Universidade de São Paulo, Museu de Zoologia, São Paulo; and a doctorate (2022) in ecology, evolution and organismal biology from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship (2022-2026) at the Science Research Initiative (SRI), College of Science, University of Utah, where he received the 2024 Outstanding Postdoctoral Researcher Award.
A native of Brazil, he speaks his native language (Portuguese) and is fluent in both English and Spanish and also speaks German (basic).
A series of questions and responses:
What sparked your interest in entomology?
"Will sound like a cliché, but since I was a little kid, I have been drawn to quiet little things – the enormous variety of shapes, colors, and forms, the details most people overlook, and the satisfaction of learning their scientific names. Insects were everywhere, and I was delighted to spent time watching them. From having a sense of my surroundings, I started to get fascinated about social behavior. I wanted to understand how colonies functioned and how insects could produce such complex societies. That interest eventually led me to ants and then to a much broader path involving functional morphology, systematics, evolution, genomics, and biodiversity. Ants became a way for me to ask the same questions I used to, but now with a higher degree of sophistication and at many different biological scales, from the anatomy of a mouthpart to the evolution of entire ecological relationships."
Where did you grow up? Or where were you raised?
"I grew up in São Paulo, although thankfully on the outskirts of that enormous concrete jungle, where I still had room to roam. Near the four-store apartment building complex was a patch of secondary forest, much of it composed of abandoned eucalyptus grown for the paper industry, and I would go there to explore."
"I also spent many summer vacations at my grandmother’s house in northeastern Brazil. Until 2002, there was no electricity there, so I could be my full hyperactive self – running around the Brazilian savanna, encountering plants, snakes, insects, and all sorts of other organisms, and take my occasional breaks to nibble on cashews and jackfruit directly from the trees. That was, of course, when I was not helping with work around the farm – so many bugs around the garden and the watermelon rows! Being immersed in a place without many of the distractions of city life made those years especially formative. I learned to observe, explore, and become comfortable in nature long before I thought of biology as a profession."
What are some of the highlights of your career so far?
"On a personal level, one of the greatest highlights has been the opportunity to visit extraordinary places because of ants. I have worked in the Brazilian Amazon and Atlantic Forest, the Colombian páramo, Bornean rainforests, the mountains and deserts of Utah, and many other environments. I remain humbled that studying ants has taken me to so many remarkable parts of the world."
"Professionally, the greatest highlight has been working with amazing people. Myrmecologists are a wonderful community, and many of my closest collaborations and friendships developed through our shared interest in ants. As an undergraduate, I began studying ants through functional morphology. Then, it evolved into systematics, including the evolution of mouthparts in a group of soil-dwelling ants. That work introduced me to systematics, evolutionary biology, and collaborative research."
"More recently, a major highlight has been investigating repeated evolutionary transitions in ant-plant relationships, particularly within the ant genus Myrmelachista. That project brings together field biology, natural history, phylogenetics, comparative genomics, and transcriptomics. It represents the kind of integrative research program I had hoped to build when I first became fascinated by ants."
Do you have a favorite insect? Which one? Or why? Or why not?
"I have several favorites, but Daceton armigerum – a.k.a. “the exorcist ant” – is probably at the top of the list. I like it so much that I have it tattooed on my arm."
"It was the last ant species I collected during a Neotropical ant course in Peru in 2012. That course was an important moment for me because I met many of the researchers whose work I had been reading in ant taxonomy and systematics. It gave me a much clearer sense of the path I wanted to follow."
"The ant itself is also spectacular. It is orange, dorsoventrally flattened, and polymorphic, meaning that workers occur in very different sizes in the same colony. It has a long neck and a large, heart-shaped head. It is an arboreal species, and when disturbed, workers can throw their heads backward in a wonderfully dramatic way, which inspired its nickname. It is almost impossible to look at one and not become instantly attracted to it!"
Why do ants fascinate you? What would you tell people who dislike ants?
"Because they are fANTastic!"
"More seriously, ants fascinate me because they combine extraordinary biological diversity with complex behavior and enormous ecological importance. They live almost everywhere, occupy an astonishing range of ecological roles, and have evolved remarkable relationships with plants, fungi, microbes, and other organisms. They allow us to study everything from social behavior and biomechanics to community ecology, evolution, and genomics."
"To people who dislike ants, I would say: give them a second chance. Most negative experiences come from finding ants in their kitchen or having an unpleasant encounter with a stinging species, such as the red imported fire ant. Those experiences are understandable, but they represent only a tiny portion of ant diversity. Once you begin looking closely, ants become less like anonymous pests and more like thousands of distinct species, each with its own appearance, behavior, evolutionary history, and ecological role. And seeing members of a colony working in organized fashion is mesmerizing!"
Now that you’re a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty, what are some of your plans/visions?
"Would it be okay to say that my plans are ambitious? I want to build an energetic and collaborative research program addressing broad questions about ant evolution, biodiversity, and ecological interactions. One major direction will be understanding evolutionary convergence in ant-plant systems: when similar relationships evolve independently, do they arise through similar genomic, morphological, and behavioral changes?"
"I am also interested in invasive-species ecology, and California is, unfortunately, an excellent outdoor laboratory for studying biological invasions and their effects on native communities. More broadly, I hope to combine fieldwork, natural history, museum collections, functional morphology, phylogenomics, and comparative genomics."
"I also want my laboratory to be international and welcoming. I hope to bring students and visiting researchers from different parts of the world to UC Davis, while also building durable collaborations with researchers and institutions abroad."
"Teaching and outreach will be equally important. I want to create dynamic entomology courses for undergraduate and graduate students, with more opportunities for students to observe insects directly, ask questions, work with real data, and understand how scientific knowledge is produced. I also look forward to keeping contributing to events such as Biodiversity Day and Picnic Day and help develop new ones, like a Bug Festival. Finally, outreach matters deeply to me. I love talking about bugs, but I also value what I learn from people with different experiences, backgrounds, and ways of seeing the natural world."
Why did you choose UC Davis?
"I applied for what I considered an exceptionally competitive position, and I feel very fortunate to have been selected. It may be most accurate to say that UC Davis chose me – and I am deeply grateful that it did."
"The department’s long tradition of outstanding entomological research was a major attraction, but so was the sense of community I encountered during my visit. I was impressed by the breadth of expertise, the collaborative culture, and the genuine enthusiasm for insects across research, teaching, collections, and outreach. UC Davis offers an unusual environment in which natural history and organismal biology can interact with genomics, ecology, agriculture, and evolutionary science."
"I am very glad to be here and to begin building my research and teaching program within the Davis community."
Who are your mentors?
"I have been fortunate to learn from many remarkable people. As an undergraduate intern at the Museum of Zoology of the University of São Paulo, I entered the world of ant research through the laboratory of Dr. Carlos Roberto F. Brandão. Dr. Rodrigo Feitosa, who was then a Ph.D. student, and then research associate Dr. Rogério Rosa da Silva were my primary day-to-day mentors. They taught me how to observe ants carefully, think about morphology, navigate museum collections, and begin approaching taxonomy and ecology as scientific disciplines."
"During my master’s degree at the University of São Paulo, I also had the opportunity to work briefly with Dr. Corrie Moreau at the Field Museum in Chicago. That experience in her lab helped expand my perspective toward molecular systematics and large-scale questions about ant evolution."
"Dr. Jack Longino, my Ph.D. adviser at the University of Utah, was – and in many ways, still is – another central mentor. From him I learned an enormous amount about ant biodiversity, natural history, systematics, quantitative approaches, and the value of asking ambitious questions while remaining grounded in the organisms themselves. Credits also goes to Dr. Michael Branstetter, a UC Davis graduate, who was my phylogenomic guru when I first began my graduate studies in Utah."
"Beyond these individuals, I have also been shaped by collaborators, colleagues, students, field assistants, collection managers, and the broader insect community. Mentorship has never been limited to a single direction; some of my most important lessons have come from working alongside others and learning how they approach a problem differently."
What is your philosophy of teaching?
"I would say that curiosity is at the center of my teaching philosophy. I want students to leave a course not only knowing more about insects or whatever is the subject, but also noticing more, asking better questions, and feeling capable of investigating those questions themselves."
"I also believe strongly in fairness. Students arrive with different backgrounds, experiences, resources, and levels of preparation. Fair teaching does not mean lowering expectations; it means making expectations clear, providing students with meaningful opportunities to learn, and evaluating them consistently and transparently."
"Whenever possible, I strive to connect concepts to real organisms, specimens, datasets, and scientific problems. Entomology is especially well suited to active learning because insects are everywhere and because they connect so many disciplines. I want students to understand that science is not simply a collection of facts. It is a process of observation, questioning, testing, interpretation, revision, and (hopefully) communication."
"Ultimately, I hope students leave my classrooms with greater confidence in their ability to think scientifically – and perhaps with a new appreciation for the small organisms they once overlooked."
What do people NOT know about you? A hobby or interest or something you did? What would they be surprised to know?
"If I could pick one of my hobbies, I would say that I truly enjoy poetry and writing poems. That may seem different from phylogenomics or ant taxonomy, but to me they are connected. Both science and poetry depend on observation, attention to detail, and trying to find the right language for something that is difficult to describe."
"So I suppose I also love languages. I enjoy how different languages organize ideas and how certain thoughts, images, or emotions can feel slightly different depending on the language used to express them. That interest also shapes how I think about science communication – especially how we can make scientific ideas meaningful and accessible to people from different backgrounds."
He is the author or co-author of research published in such peer-reviewed journals as PLoS One, Insect Systematics and Diversity, Ornithology, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Journal of Applied Entomology, Ecology, Sociobiology, and Systematic Entomology.
Research in preparation (with colleagues) includes such topics as
- "The phylogenomic landscape of understory ant-plant symbioses in the Neotropics"
- "A taxonomic revision of the arboreal ant genus Myrmelachista (Formicinae: Myrmelachistini)
- "Unraveling the identities of associated insects (Coccoidea) in ant-plant symbioses with nanopore DNA sequencing. (undergraduate mentee)
- "Nanopore sequencing as a tool to identify cryptic evolution of reed buntings (Emberizidae: Emberiza). (undergraduate mentee)
His collaborators include UC Davis doctoral alumni Jill Oberski, Michael Branstetter, Zachary Griebenow, Brendon Boudinot.
Probst served as a "Bug Doctor" at the 2026 UC Davis Picnic Day, discussing insects and answering questions from the public. He also fielded questions about ants, with Phil Ward lab members, at the UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day at the Bohart Museum of Entomology.
Probst recently delivered a presentation on "Understory Ant-Plant Symbioses as Repeated Evolutionary Experiments," as part of the California Department of Food and Agriculture's 2026 seminar series.