The fun part of my job
May. 27th, 2005 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterThis morning, I drove our lab's brand new monster truck out to the Tonto National Forest to scout out the ant scene. It was soooo much fun out there--we drove out just as the sun was coming up, and the sky turned all sorts of shades of blue and purple behind the mountains. Of course, among the list of things forgotten was my camera. But I'm taking my two undergraduate assistants back out there next Friday, so I'll try to get some good photographs to post then.
Oh, that's right--for those who don't know, this particular "forest" consists largely of desert in the areas we visited--the tallest trees are the giant, ancient saguaro cacti, which were all blooming. There are also a lot of low-lying paloverde trees, and of course tons of creosote bushes. Paloverde is an interesting tree because it has very small leaves and green, photosynthetic bark. If you live somewhere xeric (dry), I recommend planting paloverde for shade. Creosote bushes are also quite interesting--although the largest ones only get to be about the size of a desk or small car, they live to be thousands of years old. Desert archaeologists often use creosote bushes to figure out how old desert artifacts are. Creosote bushes also smell like the desert smells after a heavy rain. It's one of the best smells in the world.
Anyhow, this past winter, we finally got a lot of rain--most of Arizona has been experiencing drought conditions for the past 6+ years, so the rain was quite welcome. As a result, during the spring, many of the formerly bare and brown hilltops turned a (relatively) lush green with grass and wildflowers. But in the past month and a half, it hasn't rained at all, and mother nature just recently turned up the thermostat, so now all of those transient little plants have crisped to a nice golden hue and are busy trying to propagate themselves by seed.
What this means for me is that while I was able to walk around quite easily last fall, locating ant colonies, this spring it's much more difficult to walk around and see the action on the ground. The Arizona desert is teeming with ants, but of course I've chosen to study a species that's not all that conspicuous this far north. We were able to relocate a couple of the colonies I had marked last fall, but there was no hope for finding any new colonies.
Once we'd poked around a bit, it was time to help out another new grad student who was trying to collect a species of ant that's in the process of mating this time of year. Most ant species only mate and start new colonies during a particular season, and if you miss them at the time, well, you'll have to wait until the following year to get some more. To put this in context, I've been trying to collect leafcutter queens for two years now. Hopefully I won't miss them this fall, or I'm screwed.
Anyway--so these ants (let's call them californicus) are mating this time of year, so we drove to another location to look for them, and got to watch a bunch of virgin queens take off from a nest. It's an incredible sight--at first these winged ants climb up out of the nest entrance and hang around the opening, and then suddenly they all take wing and fly off to mate. After they mate, the winged males die and the winged females fly off to a nice spot to start a new colony, where they shed their wings and begin excavating. Once they've dug themselves a new nest, they lay their first set of eggs and feed and raise them until they emerge as adult workers. Quite a sight.
Oh, that's right--for those who don't know, this particular "forest" consists largely of desert in the areas we visited--the tallest trees are the giant, ancient saguaro cacti, which were all blooming. There are also a lot of low-lying paloverde trees, and of course tons of creosote bushes. Paloverde is an interesting tree because it has very small leaves and green, photosynthetic bark. If you live somewhere xeric (dry), I recommend planting paloverde for shade. Creosote bushes are also quite interesting--although the largest ones only get to be about the size of a desk or small car, they live to be thousands of years old. Desert archaeologists often use creosote bushes to figure out how old desert artifacts are. Creosote bushes also smell like the desert smells after a heavy rain. It's one of the best smells in the world.
Anyhow, this past winter, we finally got a lot of rain--most of Arizona has been experiencing drought conditions for the past 6+ years, so the rain was quite welcome. As a result, during the spring, many of the formerly bare and brown hilltops turned a (relatively) lush green with grass and wildflowers. But in the past month and a half, it hasn't rained at all, and mother nature just recently turned up the thermostat, so now all of those transient little plants have crisped to a nice golden hue and are busy trying to propagate themselves by seed.
What this means for me is that while I was able to walk around quite easily last fall, locating ant colonies, this spring it's much more difficult to walk around and see the action on the ground. The Arizona desert is teeming with ants, but of course I've chosen to study a species that's not all that conspicuous this far north. We were able to relocate a couple of the colonies I had marked last fall, but there was no hope for finding any new colonies.
Once we'd poked around a bit, it was time to help out another new grad student who was trying to collect a species of ant that's in the process of mating this time of year. Most ant species only mate and start new colonies during a particular season, and if you miss them at the time, well, you'll have to wait until the following year to get some more. To put this in context, I've been trying to collect leafcutter queens for two years now. Hopefully I won't miss them this fall, or I'm screwed.
Anyway--so these ants (let's call them californicus) are mating this time of year, so we drove to another location to look for them, and got to watch a bunch of virgin queens take off from a nest. It's an incredible sight--at first these winged ants climb up out of the nest entrance and hang around the opening, and then suddenly they all take wing and fly off to mate. After they mate, the winged males die and the winged females fly off to a nice spot to start a new colony, where they shed their wings and begin excavating. Once they've dug themselves a new nest, they lay their first set of eggs and feed and raise them until they emerge as adult workers. Quite a sight.
