Hawaiian ants -a spatial analysis 

My name is Camie Martin I am a student at Brigham Young University. I am starting a masters project dealing with Hawaiian ants. I found all of your email addresses on the website directory of non-native ant researchers and was wondering if i could get some help and knowledge from the professionals that are already studying ants on Hawaii. My project is going to be dealing with the growth of the non-native ant species on the Hawaiian Islands. In 1989-1992 BYU students sampled the islands and recorded the species found and their location. The project was abandoned and I am left to pick up the pieces. I am planning on re-sampling the islands and using ARCGIS9 to spatially show the growth of the species. I want to show dispersion, see if the ants are becoming more abundant, see if more species are occurring, see if any isolation has occurred, and so on. The questions I have for you are if you think this would be a helpful project and important to the scientific community, if anything similar to this has already been done -making my project not needed or in need of a better focus, and if you have any articles I should read or if by doing this i could help your research in anyway. Please respond, thanks for your help.

Sincerely, Camie Martin
email: camiefmartin@gmail.com