Ant Work

November 19

Things have settled into a fairly regular routine around here at Western Flora. Maria and I (try!) to wake up at 5:30 AM. We have breakfast, get ready for the field, pack up the truck, and drive to our parking spot just across the highway. The driveway is the long stretch of our commute. It is a little over a half a mile and there can be traffic - bobtailed lizards, kangaroos, and whatever other wildlife causes us to stop along the way.

Once we are in the field there are a number of things we do, depending on what the day calls for. One chore is to find the nests of our ants. The first day we got out in the field and tried to find nests I realized I had not brought any bait with me. Doing field work teaches you to make do with what you have on hand so I used pieces of the granola bar I had in my pack. After some trials with other baits the following day it turned out that granola worked best. Give one of our ants a piece of granola and she runs right back to the nest with it. The task that takes most of our time in the field is digging up nests. Lots of digging holes (mainly Maria's doing, considering she has the good back) and sieving material through a series different sized screens. We end up with a dishpan sized plastic bin containing ants, their brood, some sand, plant parts, and a variety of other small insects. Some of these things are potential parasites of the ants we are studying. We are also making plaster casts of nests. This will help us to figure out the structure of a typical nest. Other things we are trying to gather data about includes information about the ants' diet (seeds and insects) and how they handle the parts of the food they gather that they do not want. Most important is how they handle the seeds they gather and end up dispersing for plants.

It generally gets too hot around 11 or 12, so hot in fact that it is difficult to keep the ants alive as we are digging and sorting them out. Our ant species does not forage during midday. There are one group of species here that does not come out until it gets really hot, > 100 degrees. One day last week it was 42 C (~ 107 F). Those crazy ants that like it hot were real busy. Anyway we generally retreat to our apartment for an afternoon siesta once the hottest part of the day arrives.

Siesta time is a lot more variable than our time in the field. Naps, lunch, reading, filling out postcards, etc. takes up part of the time. It is also a good time to sort and count ants, update data sheets, make notes, and prepare things we need to use for the field. Somewhere around 4:30 to 5:30 it cools off enough to go back out in the field again. The evenings outside are really nice. The temperature becomes increasingly more pleasant as the sun falls from the sky, sunsets are colorful, and we are able to make more progress with our work.

Most nights we eat dinner in our apartment. We have much of what we need here and there is a small town (population 268 according to the sign), with a small grocery store, about 15 miles from here. We also have the option of eating "evening meal" with our Caravan Park hosts. The first few times we ate with them we ate in their home. Since then, we have had a prepared dinner with larger groups of visitors and our hosts. There is a larger dining hall where they serve meals when they have larger groups. The dining hall also has another room that is set up for giving talks. Alan Tinker, one of the hosts, gives flower walks during the flowering season and he ends the walk by taking everyone to the lecture room. There is a steroemicroscope hooked up to a projector and he can show folks details of the plants he picks during the walk.

I gave a little talk about ants after dinner one night. The other day I went to go use the the stereomicroscope and Alan was there trying to get rid of a Western Brown snake. It had gotten in and, in going after a dead mouse, got stuck in the mousetrap.
Alan was holding the snake at the end of the broomstick and I asked him if it was poisonous. He casually said it had just about the most lethal venom of any of the snakes around. Just another day at Western Flora.