#  Valentine Bouju 

MCZ Biodiversity Postdoctoral Fellow

 

 

 



   ![Portrait of Valentine Bouju, smiling, with short hair, blurred foliage background](/sites/g/files/omnuum6366/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/farrell/files/valentine-portrait-2024web_1.jpg?itok=zOZfefAf) 

 



 

 location\_on Museum of Comparative Zoology Harvard University 26 Oxford St Cambridge, MA 02138 

 laptop\_windows [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3185-5047) 

 

 



 

## The history of ants: What do Dominican resins unveil about the biodiversity and ecological evolution of Formicidae?

I am a paleoentomologist and a paleobotanist, working on fossilized resin and its exquisitely preserved inclusions. I specialize in the study of fossilized insects, mostly ants and dipterans, as well as cryptogam plants such as liverworts. I conduct taxonomical investigations to retrieve biodiversity and ecological interaction data from the past ecosystems. Inventories of paleobiodiversity, and taxonomical datasets, are crucial to track down the morphological, ecological, and geographical evolution of taxa as well as to strengthen phylogenetic studies. I also conduct paleoenvironment reconstructions.

As a trained biologist and geologist, I use a multidisciplinary approach to describe past environments and their evolution through time. At the MCZ, I am investigating the ant assemblage of the Miocene amber and younger copal from the Dominican Republic, through the historical collection of ant inclusions.



 

 

 



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 Attachments- [  picture\_as\_pdf  ValentineBouju-CV2025-en.pdf ](/sites/g/files/omnuum6366/files/2025-08/ValentineBouju-CV2025-en.pdf)
 
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- ## Role
    
     [Postdoctoral fellow](/people-role/postdocs)