What I do all day

Lj seems to be a little bit slow this morning, so I'm gonna post photos behind a cut. Below are some pictures of where I spend my time. The first is a picture of the 50 colonies that I spend hours and hours with every day. Below that is a picture of one of the leafcutter nests, which is built out of interconnected petri dishes. You can imagine how much fun it could be to come up with different interconnected designs, but they are a bit tricky because the tubes like to fall out and then there are ants everywhere. We give them dishes that are filled with some pottery plaster or plaster of Paris because the plaster retains moisture. The ants then grow their fungus in the plaster-filled dishes.

The final picture is a close-up of one of my really small colonies. The colony consists of three queens and two workers. The worker is on the left-hand side. My undergrad K took the last picture. Enjoy!

( ant photos... )