A Two-Dimensional Analysis of Fire Ant Pellets Open Access

Abstract

Red imported fire ants (RIFA),Solenopsis invicta, have been observed to display significantly different surface construction based on soil moisture in natural soil. To investigate a reason for such a difference, we focused on the pellets used to make surface constructions in 20% and 30% water concentrated soil and observed their sizes and shape by measuring their area, maximum and minimum Feret diameters, and eccentricity. Our results showed that although pellet shape remains relatively constant between moisture conditions in natural soil, the size distribution is affected by the moisture content.

Table of Contents

Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Fire Ants,Solenopsis invicta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 Methods 5 2.1 Experiment set up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.1.1 Ant collection and Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.1.2 Soil Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.1.3 Camera and Imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2 Preparation and execution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.2.1 Ant Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.2.2 Pellet size imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 3 Results, Limitations, and Future Directions 15 3.1 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 3.1.1 Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 3.1.2 Axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 3.1.3 Eccentricity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 3.2 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 3.3 Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Bibliography 22

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Physics
Degree	B.S.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Physics, General Biology, Ecology
Keyword	Fire Ants
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Jennifer Rieser, Emory University
Committee Members	Eric Weeks, Emory University Justin Burton, Emory University

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