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
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