Ant Behavior Final Report Fall 2002

This topic submitted by Laura Broseke, Taryn Nye, Elizabeth Gerber, Sai Yan Chu (taryn_n50@hotmail.com) at 9:46 PM on 12/4/02. Additions were last made on Wednesday, December 10, 2008. Section: Cummins

Natural Systems 1 Fall, 2002 -Western Program-Miami University

Ant Behavior
Which path do they prefer?
By Taryn Nye, Laura Broseke, Sai Yan Chu, Elizabeth Gerber

To see the final version of our project go to this website-- Ant Behavior--Which Paths Do They Prefer?. Enjoy!

Abstract

This research project is being performed to discover the behaviors of ants, specifically their choice of path during the foraging process. A series of bridges will be constructed to observe these behaviors. There will be four different bridges with two paths each: horizontal verses vertical, long verses short, smooth verses rough, and narrow verses wide. We will be observing the bridges with ants for several months, one set will be inside and another outside. These observations will help us to conclude which paths ants prefer. This is relevant to everyday life. It can be compared to human activity in society. We will be able to compare path choices of ants to traveling preferences of humans.

For each observation we recorded the number of ants on each bridge, food platform, total number of ants, time, temperature, date, any other observations. With this data we concluded that there is a significant difference in the data. This means that the ants prefered certain bridges over others. The predictions we previously made were based on time and energy efficiency as well as the paths that humans would prefer. The collected data in stat view and SuperANova supported these predictions. For each pair of bridges there was one bridge that was more popular: wide, rough, short, and horizontal.

For Further Info on this Topic, Check out this WWW Site: http://marineecology.wcp.muohio.edu/ns1fall02/cummins/morning/ants/web/antbehavior.html .
Next Article
Previous Article
Return to the Topic Menu or the Course Syllabus.