Author: Horace. Z
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Art Seris 2 – The Ants’
Ants are known to construct massive and underground elaborate nests. The excavation of large subterranean nests requires collective efforts to pick up and transfer soil particles. This behavior breaks down to the simple action series of picking up an object, carrying the object to the desired location, and putting the object down. Intriguingly, it turns […]
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Mating flight short film
Dr. Brendan Hunt suggested to me that I should videotape the mating flight behavior behavior of fire ants, since there is no good visual materials of it online. So I took out my camera in a collecting trip last year and made this short video documentary. Hope you like it! — Text in the video […]
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Lab rearing fire ants for research
Here is a illustrated guide to maintain fire ant (S. invicta) colonies in the lab for research purpose. Assistants in the Ross lab or anyone working on fire ants are welcome to refer this page. The knowledge here is taught by Dr. Ken Ross and his predecessors. I have also drawn from my own experience. […]
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Art Series 1 – Fire Ant Painting
Apparently, ants can “paint”. These paintings are done by letting a “ball” of aggregating fire ant (S. invicta) walk along with acrylic paint drops. As the ants diffuse outward, they create an exploding graphic pattern. Using different caste/sex/size of ants, we can get very different patterns. Each painting is thus infused with the ants’ instinct […]
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Collecting Temnothorax
Dr. TAKAO SASAKI [ sasakilab.ecology.uga.edu ] recently joined UGA department of ecology, started a lab to study collective animal behavior! To help him collect study organism Temnothorax ants, we went up to Northern GA. (With the help of Dr. Doug Booher, who is an ant taxonomy expert.) Looking for rotten nuts around trees not too […]
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Ant labs of NA
Who is studying social evolution of ants in America? (Mostly ant people here. Bee, wasp people are just too much… maybe add them later). (Featured Image credit: Alex Wild) Order randomly. Updated in 2018. ROSS Lab, U Georgia http://www.caes.uga.edu/departments/entomology/people/faculty/ken-ross.html Social polymorphism, population genetics, chemical communication in fire ants HUNT Lab, U Georgia http://www.huntlab.uga.edu/index.html Bioinformatic & […]
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Ross lab roadmap
History of fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) research by Ross lab and collaborators. Summary slides © Dr. Kenneth Ross Ross and Fletcher (1985): Use allozyme at two loci for genetic structure. Foundress M queens singly inseminated. Average relatedness among female nestmates of M is 0.714, ~not different from 0.75. P queens also singly inseminated, not more […]
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The wasps around us
In this past summer, I was lucky enough to discover and observe quite a few Hymenopteran species living in and around the old house in north Athens. Giant resin bee, Megachile sculpturalis (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) Found at the back of the house. Mason wasp, Parancistrocerus fulvipes. Found on the outlet on the patio. Mason wasp Eumenes fraternus (suspected). Found […]
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The Queens
What is more fun for an ant lover to observe the starting of a super organism? I remember having my first pet ant colony back in the second year of high school. Observing development of the colony, the transition of different life stages, the complex social behavior, that planted my passion for social insects. In […]
Horace Zeng 