Status [ants]

Yesterday was a marathon day. Got started measuring ant queen respiration rates at 6 am - we managed to fit in 59 queens today. Our second contingent returned from the field with more ant queens, so we got to have fun teaching ourselves how to distinguish Pogonomyrmex californicus from Pogonomyrmex subnititus (hint: propodeal spines, like the workers!). Then I decided we should put the queens in ant farms, so naturally a substantial number of them started to dig immediately! So we had to wrap up with 4 rounds of scan sampling and will continue tomorrow.

Ant queen season is intense.