Sedgwick Reserve

27 Sep, 08 AM - 27 Sep, 11 AM

The main purpose of our visit is to observe and potentially collect Veromessor. andrei forager ants and bring them back to the lab on UCLA campus. I would like to observe the foragers in their natural habitat in order to better understand their environmental context. These preliminary observations will help me develop a more interesting and ecologically relevant research questions for my Phd research. If I end up collecting some v. andrei foragers, this preliminary research will help me create optimal lab conditions and methods that allow me to answer my larger, more elaborate, research questions in the spring and summer of 2020. Furthermore, I will collect some other species of ants I see and will attempt to key them out with a professor here at UCLA. I would be more than happy to provide you with some data on the different species of ants on the reserve. My graduate research broadly address whether environmental factors or the genetic composition of Veromessor andrei ant colonies has a larger influence on the architecture and structural features of the nests they build We plan to camp on the reserve for one night (Friday 9/20/19). We would arrive around 4pm on Friday 9/20 and that same evening we would go out into the field and scout the sites where Will Petry has previously found V. andrei colonies. Then very early the following morning 9/20 we would go out and actually collect foragers from those same locations. It would be a very quick trip because we will only be collecting the ants in the morning (9/21) as this is really the only time of day that they are actively out of the nest foraging.

Visit #64861 @Sedgwick Reserve

Approved

Under Project # 43738 | Research

Veromessor nest architecture and collective behavior

graduate_student - University of California, Los Angeles

Reservation Members(s)

Eva Horna Lowell Sep 27, 2019 (1 days)

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Day Use Only 1 Sep 27 (3 hours)