Volume 41, Number 1, January 1995:
Collection and Maintenance of Ants
and
Studying Ants: A Beginning
by Mark B. DuBois

Text-only version

ISSUE HOME PAGE

ABOUT THIS ISSUE
- about KSN
- about the author

IN THIS ISSUE
- introduction
- collection
- maintenance, observation ant farm
- maintenance, classroom use
- project observations
- literature cited
- books for children on ants

Studying Ants: A Beginning
by Mark B. DuBois
- males, queens and worker ants
- establishing a colony
- caring for young
- growth of an ant colony
- ant senses
- gardening ants
- harvester ants
- parasitic ants
- acrobat ants
- army ants
- questions, activities and investigations with ants
- further reading

SLIDESHOW
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Collection and Maintenance of Ants to Use for Teaching
by Roger D. Akre, Laurel D. Hansen, and Elizabeth A. Myhre

and

Studying Ants: A Beginning
by Mark B. DuBois

GARDENING ANTS

Trachymyrmex septentrionalis are gardening ants related to the "leaf-cutting" or "parasol" ants of the New World tropics. Kansas, Illinois and New Jersey from the northern limits of their range. Colonies are relatively small with roughly 200 individuals. Nest entrances are easily recognized by a semi-circular crater and are usually discovered in open oak woodlands with sandy soil. Although these ants are much smaller than their tropical relatives - and have correspondingly smaller nests - they share the trait of fungal cultivation and ant behavior only known to occur in certain species in the New World.

Gardening ants are unique because they harvest material to cultivate a fungus. The ants then dine on the fungus; without access to the fungus, they starve. Newly mated queens must take a small culture of the fungus with them when they leave their parental nest. After finding a new nest site, such queens often nourish the fungus with their excrement or feces. They may also place trophic eggs into the fungal mat. As the small nanitics emerge and begin to forage for food, they search for insect feces and excrement, not typical ant food. I have encountered numerous workers carrying bits of vegetable matter and insect feces to their nests. Once inside, the ants chew the material to moisten and soften it and then place it so the fungus can grow. For more information about these ants, see Weber, 1972.