Whirlwind and crazy-awesome students

[rebeccmeister]

Much of yesterday was spent considering the interface between science and society, largely because I can't decide what I want to do after graduate school and because I enjoy getting caught up in the human aspect of science. I'm getting started with an outreach project to teach middle-school teachers how to use ants in the classroom, and so there has been a great deal of initial excitement about those ideas. Then, myrmecology and I got into one of those "I don't know what I'm doing with my life" conversations. Taking a quick inventory, I'm guessing that that conversation isn't ever going to stop--my father is still asking that question, after all, and he's had many more years to work on it.

Then, teaching in the evenings is kind of difficult for me, because I have a hard time concentrating on other things beforehand and get really wound up afterwards. My students were a lot of fun, however, and patient with my fuzzy presentation of science. On the one hand, I'm a bit frustrated that my presentation was so fuzzy, but on the other hand, it's probably a more accurate picture of how science ends up working. I just hope they continue to keep thinking carefully as they write, and continue to ask a lot of good questions. That's key. I'm enjoying the challenge of trying to figure out how to meet the students at the right level to get them to expand their thinking.

We played Scrabble right after I finished teaching, which felt a bit like chaos upon chaos, but it was good. It's such a valuable chance to catch up with my friends and to expand my vocabulary (with SCART being the most recent amusing addition, as in, "I need to SCART me arse!").

Comments

[earthlingmike.livejournal.com]

So, what are the main differences and similarities between humans and ants?

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Why do you ask?

[earthlingmike.livejournal.com]

I'm curious.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

It's difficult to outline "main" differences or similarities without some additional context. For example, is it interesting to know that ants and humans are both animals? Or that ants are arthropods while humans are mammals? Or that ants and humans both have brains? Or that ants communicate primarily via chemical signaling while humans rely on other modalities?

And what's the utility of such comparisons, anyway?

[earthlingmike.livejournal.com]

I guess I was thinking about how they interact. Both humans and ants are highly dependent on the societies they live in right? I suppose it might be useful from an economic or production analysis.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Not a whole lot is really known about things like size-productivity tradeoffs in social insect colonies (colonies of ants, bees, wasps). That's actually one of the areas of research in my lab, but as it is, it's difficult to make generalizations about that. Hopefully I'll be able to say something about the matter as I develop my dissertation research on the relationship between fungus-gardening ants and their fungus. But for the moment, no major insights.

Another interesting difference lies in social structure. Social insect colonies are thought to be made up of groups of related individuals, while human societies are largely comprised of groups of unrelated individuals.

That said, many types of ants display behaviors that humans can readily relate to--engaging in territorial battles, growing their own food, enslaving other ants...