School project questions

[AntsLuxembourg]

I sent you a PM, don't know if you got it? I don't know how this forum works LOL

I got it.

And yes I've seen better forum layouts but it is what it is.

[AntsLuxembourg]

I sent you a PM, don't know if you got it? I don't know how this forum works LOL

Hey,
I'm curious what the progress on your project is, if you have prepared something already.

[antPWS]

Hey!

I talked to my teacher and he said that the best way to do an experiment is to gather as much information as possible, formulate a research queation, formulate a hypothesis, experiment and then lead the results back to the information previously found. That's what he wants to see and will give a mark for.

I talked with my father about possible experiments and we ended up with light as a factor to experiment with. I was thinking about seeing if it takes Messor barbarus longer to find their food when the light intensity is lower and possibly if the color of the light has any effect. I'm now trying to gather information about ants in general and Messor species specifically using light to navigate and finding food.

So that's how it's going now

Becoming a little stressed because I have 6 weeks left till I have to hand in the first version of my project.

One thing I look forward to is my project presentation. I will probably bring one of my small Lasius niger colonies a I don't want to stress out the Messor. I also put a dead Messor major in a little jar with handsanitizer so you can have a good look at her, that too I will bring to my presentation. And I've already taken a ton of good pictures of my Messor colony.

https://imgur.com/a/pT2B9WS

I don't know if you can see the photo's?

[antperson24]

Hey!

I talked to my teacher and he said that the best way to do an experiment is to gather as much information as possible, formulate a research queation, formulate a hypothesis, experiment and then lead the results back to the information previously found. That's what he wants to see and will give a mark for.

I talked with my father about possible experiments and we ended up with light as a factor to experiment with. I was thinking about seeing if it takes Messor barbarus longer to find their food when the light intensity is lower and possibly if the color of the light has any effect. I'm now trying to gather information about ants in general and Messor species specifically using light to navigate and finding food.

So that's how it's going now

Becoming a little stressed because I have 6 weeks left till I have to hand in the first version of my project.

One thing I look forward to is my project presentation. I will probably bring one of my small Lasius niger colonies a I don't want to stress out the Messor. I also put a dead Messor major in a little jar with handsanitizer so you can have a good look at her, that too I will bring to my presentation. And I've already taken a ton of good pictures of my Messor colony.

https://imgur.com/a/pT2B9WS

I don't know if you can see the photo's?

Yep, I can see them. And your project sounds really interesting!

[AntsLuxembourg]

I talked to my teacher and he said that the best way to do an experiment is to gather as much information as possible, formulate a research queation, formulate a hypothesis, experiment and then lead the results back to the information previously found. That's what he wants to see and will give a mark for.

I talked with my father about possible experiments and we ended up with light as a factor to experiment with. I was thinking about seeing if it takes Messor barbarus longer to find their food when the light intensity is lower and possibly if the color of the light has any effect. I'm now trying to gather information about ants in general and Messor species specifically using light to navigate and finding food.

So that's how it's going now

Becoming a little stressed because I have 6 weeks left till I have to hand in the first version of my project.

One thing I look forward to is my project presentation. I will probably bring one of my small Lasius niger colonies a I don't want to stress out the Messor. I also put a dead Messor major in a little jar with handsanitizer so you can have a good look at her, that too I will bring to my presentation. And I've already taken a ton of good pictures of my Messor colony.

https://imgur.com/a/pT2B9WS

I don't know if you can see the photo's?

Sounds like an interesting question. I can share my thoughts and knowledge about ants in general with you.
My theory / hypothesis would be the following.

During the day / periods of time where they have sunlight or light in general, they send out scouts trying to find new seeds / food sources. Of course that's hard to proof.
During the night they follow the pheromone trails they left to continue to harvest the seeds.

What I think, how they define / know that it's day. Brightness from the sun / sky + heat due to higher temperatures during the day. If they don't think it's day, they might try to avoid bright lights to avoid being spotted by predators.

Ants are able to find their way in the dark with pheromones. That's where I base / build my hypothesis on.

But that's just my theory. Make your own thoughts of course and you can agree or disagree with my hypothesis.

Also, nice pictures. You feed them fruit slices?

[antPWS]

So I want to see if there is a difference in how long it takes the workers to find food in different light settings. I thought about making a "running track" of approximately 100 cm.

This is how I would like it to look like:
https://i.imgur.com/4M1TcPu.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/AKmvyr2.jpg

I want to clamp the plexiglass and foam together rather than gluing it, as I want to be able to take it apart and clean the whole thing.

I would let the ants in the "waiting chamber'' and start the timer when I pull away the barrier. I want to try this for the light colours blue, yellow, red and maybe green. If I have enough time to do more experiments I also want to vary the brightness of the light.
One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to get the ants out of the running track so I can clean it, get the pheromones off of it and reuse it.

When should I consider the food "found"? When the first worker arrives?
Any food that they'll quickly want to collect? Wanted to use freshly cooked chicken as they really love that, but if you have any better suggestions let me know!

I did do a little research and found that this is a fairly new theme in the ant experiment world. I have not yet found experiments by others testing light effects on Messor barbarus specifically, I'm still looking for that though.

BTW yes I feed them fruit slices, they loved the melon I gave them a little while ago!

[AntsLuxembourg]

BTW yes I feed them fruit slices, they loved the melon I gave them a little while ago!

I remember when I gave mine certain food items, I thought they loved them too until I noticed they just threw it onto their trash pile.
For the tests you should setup a camera and record their timings. That should help to find out the exact times. And also repeat the experiment once or twice with each color to make sure it was not just a coincidence.
It could also be that the ants will learn to expect food when the color changes so they will try and walk to that same spot again and much faster.
Just to add some of my thoughts into this.

[antPWS]

You think ants can be conditioned like that? I mean that would be really smart if they figure out light=food. We shall see. I thought they loved the egg yolk I gave them, till they started throwing it on the garbage pile

LOL apparently my topic is interesting, as more than 2000 people have clicked on it. I feel honored

As always, thank you for giving your thoughts on all my weird ideas!

[AntsLuxembourg]

You think ants can be conditioned like that? I mean that would be really smart if they figure out light=food. We shall see. I thought they loved the egg yolk I gave them, till they started throwing it on the garbage pile

LOL apparently my topic is interesting, as more than 2000 people have clicked on it. I feel honored

As always, thank you for giving your thoughts on all my weird ideas!

Maybe not really conditioned but I know that some antspecies count their steps to find their way around and back to the colony. Meaning that if you lengthen their legs, they will miss their target.

They don't mention what species they used or if they used more than 1 species so I take it that this goes for some and not all ants.
https://gizmodo.com/a-gruesome-experiment-with-ants-proves-they-have-built-5810941

Because of this I believe that they might remember where to expect to find their food.

[SolenopsisKeeper]

You think ants can be conditioned like that? I mean that would be really smart if they figure out light=food. We shall see. I thought they loved the egg yolk I gave them, till they started throwing it on the garbage pile

LOL apparently my topic is interesting, as more than 2000 people have clicked on it. I feel honored

As always, thank you for giving your thoughts on all my weird ideas!

Like Antsluxembourg said,(Kind of?) some species that harvest and collect seeds are drawn towards light. For daytime foraging ants, the sun is a big part of navigating, especially for harvester ants like Novomessor, Pogonmyrmex, and Messor.