Ant Ecology Case Study

The study of ant ecology is to examine the relation between ants and the environment. Ants are insects that have three body segments with six legs. They are also social insects, which live in a group of same species. Each ant colony has divided job responsibilities such as one or more queen ants are to lay eggs, male ants for mating, and working ants. Worker ants have varieties of duties. They are food searchers, soldiers to protect their nest, slave-makers to steal eggs from different ant species to slave them, as well as nannies to take care of the younger ants. In fact, except for mating ants, all other ants are all females. Interestingly, some ant species do not require any males at all, and they clone themselves to reproduce. Ants

According to the research, there are more than 10,000 species of ants, and most prefer similar type of food. They do not have a nose, but they have antennae, which performs as a nose to smell, tongue to taste, and fingers to touch the food. Ants are attracted to sweet foods, rather than salty, sour, bitter or spicy, because sugar is higher in energy as well strong scent, and the rest of other food types are poisonous to ants. They would sometimes target plant leaves that produce sugar itself, but only chews and does not swallow it since ants cannot digest

Pair of scissors was used to cut each index card exactly in half to make six pieces. All three experiments began at 12 PM, and ended two hours after, which was at 2 PM. A group of three index cards were placed both left and right side of the anthill. A metric ruler was used to measure the distance between the index cards, and from the anthill. Each index cards were 5 cm away from one another, and 1 meter away from the anthill. The most far left index cards contained one block of Hershey's milk chocolate, and the most far right index cards contained one block of Hershey's dark chocolate each. Middle index cards were left