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One last round.
Jun. 20th, 2009 05:02 pmI can't remember now if I've explained this experiment at all, because I have explained it so many times to so many different people (ceramics folks, students I teach, friends, colleagues, etc.). Anyway. My overall goal is to determine how leafcutter ants respond to changes in the amount of fungus that's present in their colony. This involves the following, ten-day process, which I will repeat a total of six times with six pairs of colonies:
1. Day 1: take apart colony, separate ants from fungus, weigh fungus, randomly (haphazardly) subsample around 60 ants, and individually paint-mark them. Re-unite ants, fungus, and queens in a new nest container.
2. Day 2: let colony recover from trauma; give self a day to catch up on everything else and prepare to observe.
3. Days 3-4: Observe behavior; I am using a scan-sampling method. That means that, ten times a day, I look to see what each and every paint-marked ant is doing. The first day is always the worst, because some ants will have died, and some will have lost a few/most of their paint-marks. I will have invariably paint-marked a few ants incorrectly as well (I blame the hours of paint fumes). At the end of day 4, I open up one nest and remove half of the fungus (and all of the brood - developing young - associated with that fungus). I stick it in the other nest.
4. Days 5-8: Repeat observation process. Gets easier over time as I get to know individual ants. At the end of day 8, I return the fungus to its original colony.
5. Days 9-10: Continue observation process.
I have one more round of observations to finish today. I give myself 5-10 minutes between observations to take a break--go to the bathroom, refill my mug of water, stare into space (or the internets), eat lunch, step out of the lab into the cool, cool hallway. I am still seeing ants when I close my eyes.
After I finish this evening, I will go off to the grocery store, and then head home to cook up some red lentils and zucchini. Then![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
trifold_flame will stop by to catch up, and then I will sleep. Tomorrow I'll start observations as early as possible (hopefully 6 am), because I will also take time to go on my annual Solstice Ride. Forecast highs are only 101 degrees Fahrenheit (38.3 C), so it won't be the same as usual. That's probably a good thing, overall. Then I will volunteer at Bike Saviours, and then I will head back to the lab to finish any and all remaining observations.
I also wanted to mention--I've been sneaking in a little extra time in the garden lately. All of the squashes that I have tried to grow have failed to produce fruits (including the volunteer squash in the middle of the herb garden--it produces small gourds that wither away). So I am taking a few minutes to start sifting out the compost that's ready to go. It fills me with optimism to heap a little bit of it around each of the plants I've been faithfully watering every day. The peppers are doing well, though, despite the fact that I need to get more aggressive with my bermudagrass removal program (if only I had the resources to scrape the entire yard and start over, I would). And there's still that one tomato on one of the tomato plants. Plus I ate four gorgeous purple-orange carrots last night. I just hope the tomatoes can weather out the summer and get back to business in the early fall.
I miss berries. Intensely. Every summer. There's no point in buying them here--they just don't travel well. The apricots happened so fast I didn't get to make enough jam for the year.
1. Day 1: take apart colony, separate ants from fungus, weigh fungus, randomly (haphazardly) subsample around 60 ants, and individually paint-mark them. Re-unite ants, fungus, and queens in a new nest container.
2. Day 2: let colony recover from trauma; give self a day to catch up on everything else and prepare to observe.
3. Days 3-4: Observe behavior; I am using a scan-sampling method. That means that, ten times a day, I look to see what each and every paint-marked ant is doing. The first day is always the worst, because some ants will have died, and some will have lost a few/most of their paint-marks. I will have invariably paint-marked a few ants incorrectly as well (I blame the hours of paint fumes). At the end of day 4, I open up one nest and remove half of the fungus (and all of the brood - developing young - associated with that fungus). I stick it in the other nest.
4. Days 5-8: Repeat observation process. Gets easier over time as I get to know individual ants. At the end of day 8, I return the fungus to its original colony.
5. Days 9-10: Continue observation process.
I have one more round of observations to finish today. I give myself 5-10 minutes between observations to take a break--go to the bathroom, refill my mug of water, stare into space (or the internets), eat lunch, step out of the lab into the cool, cool hallway. I am still seeing ants when I close my eyes.
After I finish this evening, I will go off to the grocery store, and then head home to cook up some red lentils and zucchini. Then
trifold_flame will stop by to catch up, and then I will sleep. Tomorrow I'll start observations as early as possible (hopefully 6 am), because I will also take time to go on my annual Solstice Ride. Forecast highs are only 101 degrees Fahrenheit (38.3 C), so it won't be the same as usual. That's probably a good thing, overall. Then I will volunteer at Bike Saviours, and then I will head back to the lab to finish any and all remaining observations.I also wanted to mention--I've been sneaking in a little extra time in the garden lately. All of the squashes that I have tried to grow have failed to produce fruits (including the volunteer squash in the middle of the herb garden--it produces small gourds that wither away). So I am taking a few minutes to start sifting out the compost that's ready to go. It fills me with optimism to heap a little bit of it around each of the plants I've been faithfully watering every day. The peppers are doing well, though, despite the fact that I need to get more aggressive with my bermudagrass removal program (if only I had the resources to scrape the entire yard and start over, I would). And there's still that one tomato on one of the tomato plants. Plus I ate four gorgeous purple-orange carrots last night. I just hope the tomatoes can weather out the summer and get back to business in the early fall.
I miss berries. Intensely. Every summer. There's no point in buying them here--they just don't travel well. The apricots happened so fast I didn't get to make enough jam for the year.
