Fire Ant Research Team

I was trying to come up with an idea for a blog post, and what popped up was "Write about FART."  Well, that's a part of my life I haven't thought about in many years!  I hunted through three boxes of stuff to find this piece of letterhead; folded it so you could see the footer, too.  ;-)

For one quarter during my senior year in college, while I worked on my undergraduate research project, I was part of Dr. Walter Tschinkel's  Fire Ant Research Team.  From information at that link, there are now ten areas of research done in Dr. T's lab.  What I did fell under what is currently area Six on that list: allometry.  "Division of labor among the workers of ant colonies is based on worker age, but in a minority of species it is also based on worker body size (which varies greatly), a phenomenon referred to as polymorphism."  (Under Easily Amused:  when I highlighted that quote from the FSU link, the text turned gold and the highlight color was garnet = school colors.  Very nice touch!)

I investigated a small aspect of a red fire ant colony's response to threat.  I'd mentally outline an area on the side of a mound, stomp on the ground at the base of the mound, then collect every ant that crossed my 'area.'  Over the ten week quarter, I made many stops to collect ants.  Almost every time I was near a road at least one passerby would warn me that's a fire ant mound and I should stay away!  Folks in the south are nice like that.  I gave up on sampling near busy streets because too many people interrupted me.

You may be wondering how I collected the ants.  With a gadget made in the lab!  Nonscientists are probably unaware of how often we use something cobbled together at the bench from stuff in the drawers at the time.  I had a glass test tube, maybe an inch across and about six inches long, closed with a black rubber stopper.  The stopper had two holes in it.  Each hole had a short glass rod tube stuck through it.  One glass rod tube had a longish piece (about a foot) of rubber tubing attached.  The other had (1) a very small mesh screen tightly covering the end inside the test tube and (2) a shorter piece of rubber tubing.  The operator (me) sucked on the shorter piece of tubing and "vacuumed" up ants with the longer piece.  (That may have had a bit of glass rod tube on the working end, I just don't remember.)  Ants collected in the test tube.  The mesh screen prevented me from sucking up ants.  I think I had a timer for how long I collected for each session.

So, now I had a test tube with ants.  Angry ants, I might add.  This was where I could calmly watch what fire ants do when they sting you.  Yes, sting.  They hang on tight with their big jaws, arch up their bodies, bring their rump (with the stinger) around underneath and then jab.  There were times I watched them sting me, too.

This picture is NOT an ant on me, but from HERE, a good article from the University of California Riverside on red imported fire ants (Solenopsis invicta).

Okay, back to that tube of ants.  I only had one sampling gadget, so the ants couldn't stay in there.  The solution was plastic boxes with their edges dipped in talc powder.  The powder kept the ants from climbing out of the box while I was emptying the tube and before I got the lid on.

Back in the lab, I sorted them by size class (large stack of sieves with grid sizes from larger to smaller).  I remember measuring ant heads under a dissecting microscope as part of this.  At the end, my results hinted at a skew toward larger ants responding to the threat.  I think one of Dr. T's graduate students at the time used my work as a starting point for her thesis.

I can't end this without putting in a plug for Dr. Tschinkel.  HERE's an article from Discover Magazine on his work visualizing the shape of ant nests underground.  AND he wrote a book!

I'm going to order it today.  It may sit in my TBR pile for a while, or I may nibble at it until I finish it.  No telling. 

Edit:  Dr. T's book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2007!  Wow!!