Gwyneth Tefft, Entry #2, The Wonderful World of Ants

Wrapping up week 2, I'm already feeling more confident and comfortable in the lab. Of course, this wouldn't be possible without the friendly support of my PI and grad students. Because there are currently only 3 people working in my lab, the grad students have gone out of their way to help me when I have questions and teach me everything I need to know about the world of ants.
This past week, I've been helping with my PI's project about the uses of cuticular hydrocarbons in Argentine ants. My job is to set up the trials by putting 20 ants into each of the 30 test tubes, which is a tedious process. I have to individually suck up 20 ants using an aspirator, and put them in each tube, all while making sure they don't crawl out of it before I put the cap on. Initially, I was terrible at this, but each day I've gotten a little bit better at it.

An Aspirator (what I use to suck up ants)

On Monday, I was able to go on my first field excursion to collect ants! Brian and I drove an hour away to find a specific colony. You would think that finding ants is relatively easy and not very time consuming. Nope! We spent over an hour lifting up rocks and logs, searching for an Argentine ant nest. Finally, we found a trail of these ants crawling up a tree and were able to collect 300 of them.    

Hard work in the field!

Looking forward, I will have the opportunity to help Brian and Kelsey with their projects. Brian is trying to understand the functions of the compound Iridomyrmecin and figure out if Argentine ants use this as both an alarm pheromone and an ant repellent. Kelsey is working with slave making ants and has invited me to go camping with her, where we will further research this unique species of ant.