we are here today
to you about ants but really our mission
is to inspire you to take a moment
she beauty hiding in plain sight over
the past two years our personal
experience has been that nothing has
really changed
but in a way everything has changed the
world around us is no different but what
we have discovered in our own backyard
has changed the way we look at it we’ve
had the opportunity to appreciate the
diversity events from the wooded forests
of Pennsylvania to the rolling mountains
of the Sierra Nevadas and the white
sandy beaches of South Carolina ants as
we know them are tiny creepy bugs that
hide in your cereal boxes or live in
your walls and don’t even bother to pay
rent but really ants are much much more
ant colonies are intricate civilizations
that are made up of thousands of
individuals who live together without
dispute or conflict in fact their
societies are incredibly similar to ours
with hierarchies armies and even
agriculture our passion for studying the
world events has prompted us to interact
with nature in an intimate level and
allowed us to appreciate the wonder and
everything to help you understand the
sheer magnitude of this magnificent
society let’s look at a few figures the
society events evolved over 92 million
years ago
making it nearly 600 times as old as our
own which evolved less than two hundred
thousand years ago there are over 12,000
recorded species of ants and less than a
dozen recorded species of humans for
example homo sapiens is one of the eight
species of humans in the genus homo
there are an estimated 10 quadrillion
ants on the planet compared to the
United Nations recent estimate of a mere
seven and a half billion people that’s
about 1.6 million ants per person which
in of itself is pretty hard to
comprehend ok so our story began four
years ago in a middle school science
classroom with walls lined with
beautiful text books and posters about
the anatomy of frogs hanging from the
windows picture a small fascinated
eighth grader hunched over a glass case
in the corner of this room he’s staring
at hundreds events all running around
screaming this way and that he quickly
jot down a few notes and then gently
puts the case away
he’s embarking on a project to explore
the behavior of ants under different
conditions but little does he know he
received a generation of worker ants
that will refuse to cooperate and his
experiment will fail regardless of his
efforts this fascinated curious kid
gaping in awe at a few hundred ants was
me beginning to discover my love for
this beautiful sophisticated world so
two years ago I try to revive this
project this time with my brother’s help
but early on in the experiment we
realized that we need many more ants
than we previously thought since workers
have lifespans of only a few months we
would need to replenish our supply quite
often and we didn’t quite have the
patience nor the resources to buy as
many answer as we wanted so after doing
some research we discovered that we
would need a queen ant queen ants live
anywhere between 8 and 30 years and they
constantly lay eggs so their workers
essentially replaced themselves every
four to six months
this means that throughout a Queens life
she gives rise to a seemingly infinite
number of ants and each of these ants
served to assist the queen and improve
the overall health of the colony so that
it may live longer in fact and colonies
are often referred to as super organisms
just as human cells have specialized
roles to help the body workers have
specialized roles to help the colony and
similar to skin and blood cells in the
human body the workers are replaced
every few months now we would actually
need to catch a queen instead of digging
up an established population to reach
the queen we learned that there are
natural ways of doing so as it turns out
mature wild populations of ants actually
produce wings male and female
reproductive scald elates
when the conditions are just right the
colony sends out these reproductives to
mate high up in the air a process known
as a nuptial flight these flights occur
during specific times of year under
specific environmental conditions for
example we learned that certain flights
occurred after several days of rain or
under certain relative humidities once
mated a female a late fall to the ground
sheds her wings and begin searching for
a spot to dig a founding chamber
a safe place with a constant humidity
gradient or she’ll remain for the
duration of her life producing and
protecting her eggs that will eventually
become workers all we would need to rear
a colony was the Queen and we would need
to catch her after a nuptial flight but
before she began to dig a founding
chamber so our goal was to capture a
newly mated one and help her raise
workers and start a family so after we
learned about these nuptial flights we
were eager to find her once a mated
queen sheds her wings and digs a
founding chamber she seals the entrance
lays eggs and waits for up to half a
year until she has her first generation
of workers during this time she does not
eat at all and barely moves around but
when the first workers emerge they open
up their nest entrance and begin to
search for food so in order to replicate
this natural chamber we created test
tube setups artificial environments that
simulated a Queen’s founding chamber by
providing a humidity gradient and enough
space for nearly two dozen workers once
they emerged but unfortunately after a
few months without any success
we nearly gave up hope on finding a
queen finally while walking our dog in
June of that year hardly looking out for
a nuptial flight at all we were
pleasantly surprised to stumble upon a
huge carpenter ant queen after putting
her in a test-tube setup I watched as
she laid eggs and as those eggs slowly
grew to larva and as those larvae to
workers over the course of the next
couple of months and by the time the
first generation of workers had fully
closed I felt a sense of pride that I
would have never before associated with
keeping ants before by helping this
Queen I allowed her to bring life into
the world and the process of doing so
was truly rewarding so this experience
inspired us to continue to catch Queens
throughout the summer and into honor
whenever we caught a queen we kept her
test tube in a dark place like a closet
which simulated an underground
environment and when the Queen had her
first generation of workers we needed to
feed them so my brother and I used old
containers and mason jars to collect
crickets we found outside the crickets
were an abundant and nutritious food
source but we would need to freeze them
after they were caught to get rid of
parasites or mites they could
potentially pass on to the ants we were
perfectly fine with it but when we told
our parents they were a little hesitant
that we were keeping carpenter ants in
our closets and crickets in the freezer
we became fascinated by the process of
raising an entire civilization we
learned how to attract and identify many
kinds of ants and how to provide
customized living conditions for each
species the more we learned the more
there was to explore once autumn had
come to an end it was time for us to
wrap up our fieldwork as the ants
outside had sealed up their nest
entrances to prepare for hibernation we
would have to wait some months for
enough for flights to starve again in
the spring but this gave us an
opportunity to do additional research on
our native species we used this time to
learn to identify ants down to the
species level and what characteristics
differentiated one from another in some
cases a mere glance at an ant is all you
would need to determine it species black
carpenter ants for example were the
largest in the area and very
recognizable other species required the
exact number of hairs to be counted on
particular sections of their bodies
under intense magnification for example
workers from the species chromatic aster
sera si have to erect terror on their
thoraxes compared to the many erect ears
that chromatic aster Linea lada have we
developed a process where we first use
our camera to identify ants down to the
genus level and then a microscope to
identify them down to the species level
we use guys described by world-renowned
murmur colleges to IO Wilson of Harvard
to help us distinguish the species
before we knew it it was spring and time
to put our skills to the test we set out
what we considered traps for the ants
which really just cookie crumbs on index
cards scattered around our yard we
observed which ants regularly visited
the traps and spent most of our time
trying to identify them within a couple
of weeks we had already identified 26
species in our yard alone compared to
the three or four we were expecting
several of these species were very rare
and even had little to no professional
documentation in Pennsylvania among the
most beautiful answer photographed in
our yard was campin oddest in the
arcticus
a sophisticated species of carpenter
ants with advanced nesting habits whose
workers were an iridescent black with
deep shades of blue and violet one day
in late April my brother and I woke up
early to check on some traps we had set
out the night before we found what
looked like a mix between two relatively
common species in our yard
I couldn’t immediately identify it and I
was curious as to what it was so I
picked up a worker in a small vial and
stuck her in the fridge for a few
minutes to calm her down when I took her
out I used various keys and guys to try
to identify her but I couldn’t seem to
figure it out I reached out to one of my
good friends who’s an expert in the
field and sent him some detailed images
of the ant he identified it as a minor
worker of calabazas mississippiensis a
very rare species known as a gatekeeper
and native to Mississippi this species
like many others had two kinds of
workers miners who lived deep inside the
nest and helped the Queen tend to eggs
and larger major workers also known as
soldiers who were typically in charge of
capturing prey and protecting the nest
there was a reason I couldn’t identify
the anti depth it was a minor
although the minor worker I captured was
small and discreet the major workers of
this species were very distinctive not
only were they larger but their flat
heads were designed to match the bark of
the ash trees that they lived in so they
could plug up their calling these nest
entrances and act like living armored
doors now I was little hesitant to draw
any conclusions based off my friends
advice especially considering that the
species was supposed to live in the
south not in Pennsylvania I put this in
the back of my mind and we continued to
document the rest of the ants in our
yard until early June at which time our
school year had just ended my brother
and I came home after our last final
exam and something on a tree caught our
eye it was a major worker the ants had a
flat reddish head and was undoubtedly a
gate keeper and this was amazing
we learned that gate keeper ant colonies
do not produce major workers until
they’re over three years old so not only
did the discovery of the major worker
allow us to confirm our identification
it also meant that the species had been
as
in Pennsylvania from quite some time and
went on to suggest that these ants could
in fact be native this is one of the
most inspiring experiences in our time
researching ants the discovery of this
species in our own front yard changed
the way we looked at the society events
over the past summer we had the
opportunity to visit California and
Georgia in the Sierra Nevada mountains
we found large armored ants that
preferred high altitudes and low oxygen
while in Atlanta we found small delicate
ants that enjoyed the humidity and
intense heat of the south and although
we found these exotic ants fascinating
when we came home we gained a new level
of respect for our native species as we
realized how truly beautiful and unique
they were through our experience we were
able to take a step back from our phones
and computers and allowed ourselves to
become immersed in the wonderful world
that we live in we’ve learned a lot
about ants but we’ve learned even more
about ourselves we learned that a
passion for anything could change your
perceptions of wonder and beauty we
learned that there is beauty all around
us if we could just take a moment to
notice it many times we feel that all
inspiring experiences should involve
expensive trips to exotic locations and
faraway places but all we had to do was
step outside the past two years have
been tremendously eye-opening for us not
only because we discovered an elegant
sophisticated world outside our front
door but because we took the time to
step away from technology and appreciate
the natural beauty around us through our
experiences we’ve cultivated a wealth of
knowledge and gained an extraordinary
set of skills that we would have never
known about if we had not discovered the
magnificent world of ants we’ve been
able to learn about indigenous species
and how to raise a colony from a single
queen and from our work we’ve been
fortunate enough to meet renowned
experts in the field out of our love for
ants we’ve had the opportunity to help
others discover this beautiful society
and have given them the chance to see
firsthand the incredible opportunities
that can arise from slowing down to
appreciate the beauty of the natural
world
and although watching an ant colony can
allow one to immerse themselves in
nature there are countless other forms
of beauty that are readily accessible to
pretty much everyone in fact beauty can
be found everywhere throughout the world
to find it we simply need to take a
moment to disconnect from technology and
connect with our surroundings if you’ve
ever had a desire to learn more about
nature whether it be about a flower in
your backyard or bats in the night sky
we would like to encourage you to take a
little time out of your day to explore
your interest you’ll be astonished by
what you find thank you
to you about ants but really our mission
is to inspire you to take a moment
she beauty hiding in plain sight over
the past two years our personal
experience has been that nothing has
really changed
but in a way everything has changed the
world around us is no different but what
we have discovered in our own backyard
has changed the way we look at it we’ve
had the opportunity to appreciate the
diversity events from the wooded forests
of Pennsylvania to the rolling mountains
of the Sierra Nevadas and the white
sandy beaches of South Carolina ants as
we know them are tiny creepy bugs that
hide in your cereal boxes or live in
your walls and don’t even bother to pay
rent but really ants are much much more
ant colonies are intricate civilizations
that are made up of thousands of
individuals who live together without
dispute or conflict in fact their
societies are incredibly similar to ours
with hierarchies armies and even
agriculture our passion for studying the
world events has prompted us to interact
with nature in an intimate level and
allowed us to appreciate the wonder and
everything to help you understand the
sheer magnitude of this magnificent
society let’s look at a few figures the
society events evolved over 92 million
years ago
making it nearly 600 times as old as our
own which evolved less than two hundred
thousand years ago there are over 12,000
recorded species of ants and less than a
dozen recorded species of humans for
example homo sapiens is one of the eight
species of humans in the genus homo
there are an estimated 10 quadrillion
ants on the planet compared to the
United Nations recent estimate of a mere
seven and a half billion people that’s
about 1.6 million ants per person which
in of itself is pretty hard to
comprehend ok so our story began four
years ago in a middle school science
classroom with walls lined with
beautiful text books and posters about
the anatomy of frogs hanging from the
windows picture a small fascinated
eighth grader hunched over a glass case
in the corner of this room he’s staring
at hundreds events all running around
screaming this way and that he quickly
jot down a few notes and then gently
puts the case away
he’s embarking on a project to explore
the behavior of ants under different
conditions but little does he know he
received a generation of worker ants
that will refuse to cooperate and his
experiment will fail regardless of his
efforts this fascinated curious kid
gaping in awe at a few hundred ants was
me beginning to discover my love for
this beautiful sophisticated world so
two years ago I try to revive this
project this time with my brother’s help
but early on in the experiment we
realized that we need many more ants
than we previously thought since workers
have lifespans of only a few months we
would need to replenish our supply quite
often and we didn’t quite have the
patience nor the resources to buy as
many answer as we wanted so after doing
some research we discovered that we
would need a queen ant queen ants live
anywhere between 8 and 30 years and they
constantly lay eggs so their workers
essentially replaced themselves every
four to six months
this means that throughout a Queens life
she gives rise to a seemingly infinite
number of ants and each of these ants
served to assist the queen and improve
the overall health of the colony so that
it may live longer in fact and colonies
are often referred to as super organisms
just as human cells have specialized
roles to help the body workers have
specialized roles to help the colony and
similar to skin and blood cells in the
human body the workers are replaced
every few months now we would actually
need to catch a queen instead of digging
up an established population to reach
the queen we learned that there are
natural ways of doing so as it turns out
mature wild populations of ants actually
produce wings male and female
reproductive scald elates
when the conditions are just right the
colony sends out these reproductives to
mate high up in the air a process known
as a nuptial flight these flights occur
during specific times of year under
specific environmental conditions for
example we learned that certain flights
occurred after several days of rain or
under certain relative humidities once
mated a female a late fall to the ground
sheds her wings and begin searching for
a spot to dig a founding chamber
a safe place with a constant humidity
gradient or she’ll remain for the
duration of her life producing and
protecting her eggs that will eventually
become workers all we would need to rear
a colony was the Queen and we would need
to catch her after a nuptial flight but
before she began to dig a founding
chamber so our goal was to capture a
newly mated one and help her raise
workers and start a family so after we
learned about these nuptial flights we
were eager to find her once a mated
queen sheds her wings and digs a
founding chamber she seals the entrance
lays eggs and waits for up to half a
year until she has her first generation
of workers during this time she does not
eat at all and barely moves around but
when the first workers emerge they open
up their nest entrance and begin to
search for food so in order to replicate
this natural chamber we created test
tube setups artificial environments that
simulated a Queen’s founding chamber by
providing a humidity gradient and enough
space for nearly two dozen workers once
they emerged but unfortunately after a
few months without any success
we nearly gave up hope on finding a
queen finally while walking our dog in
June of that year hardly looking out for
a nuptial flight at all we were
pleasantly surprised to stumble upon a
huge carpenter ant queen after putting
her in a test-tube setup I watched as
she laid eggs and as those eggs slowly
grew to larva and as those larvae to
workers over the course of the next
couple of months and by the time the
first generation of workers had fully
closed I felt a sense of pride that I
would have never before associated with
keeping ants before by helping this
Queen I allowed her to bring life into
the world and the process of doing so
was truly rewarding so this experience
inspired us to continue to catch Queens
throughout the summer and into honor
whenever we caught a queen we kept her
test tube in a dark place like a closet
which simulated an underground
environment and when the Queen had her
first generation of workers we needed to
feed them so my brother and I used old
containers and mason jars to collect
crickets we found outside the crickets
were an abundant and nutritious food
source but we would need to freeze them
after they were caught to get rid of
parasites or mites they could
potentially pass on to the ants we were
perfectly fine with it but when we told
our parents they were a little hesitant
that we were keeping carpenter ants in
our closets and crickets in the freezer
we became fascinated by the process of
raising an entire civilization we
learned how to attract and identify many
kinds of ants and how to provide
customized living conditions for each
species the more we learned the more
there was to explore once autumn had
come to an end it was time for us to
wrap up our fieldwork as the ants
outside had sealed up their nest
entrances to prepare for hibernation we
would have to wait some months for
enough for flights to starve again in
the spring but this gave us an
opportunity to do additional research on
our native species we used this time to
learn to identify ants down to the
species level and what characteristics
differentiated one from another in some
cases a mere glance at an ant is all you
would need to determine it species black
carpenter ants for example were the
largest in the area and very
recognizable other species required the
exact number of hairs to be counted on
particular sections of their bodies
under intense magnification for example
workers from the species chromatic aster
sera si have to erect terror on their
thoraxes compared to the many erect ears
that chromatic aster Linea lada have we
developed a process where we first use
our camera to identify ants down to the
genus level and then a microscope to
identify them down to the species level
we use guys described by world-renowned
murmur colleges to IO Wilson of Harvard
to help us distinguish the species
before we knew it it was spring and time
to put our skills to the test we set out
what we considered traps for the ants
which really just cookie crumbs on index
cards scattered around our yard we
observed which ants regularly visited
the traps and spent most of our time
trying to identify them within a couple
of weeks we had already identified 26
species in our yard alone compared to
the three or four we were expecting
several of these species were very rare
and even had little to no professional
documentation in Pennsylvania among the
most beautiful answer photographed in
our yard was campin oddest in the
arcticus
a sophisticated species of carpenter
ants with advanced nesting habits whose
workers were an iridescent black with
deep shades of blue and violet one day
in late April my brother and I woke up
early to check on some traps we had set
out the night before we found what
looked like a mix between two relatively
common species in our yard
I couldn’t immediately identify it and I
was curious as to what it was so I
picked up a worker in a small vial and
stuck her in the fridge for a few
minutes to calm her down when I took her
out I used various keys and guys to try
to identify her but I couldn’t seem to
figure it out I reached out to one of my
good friends who’s an expert in the
field and sent him some detailed images
of the ant he identified it as a minor
worker of calabazas mississippiensis a
very rare species known as a gatekeeper
and native to Mississippi this species
like many others had two kinds of
workers miners who lived deep inside the
nest and helped the Queen tend to eggs
and larger major workers also known as
soldiers who were typically in charge of
capturing prey and protecting the nest
there was a reason I couldn’t identify
the anti depth it was a minor
although the minor worker I captured was
small and discreet the major workers of
this species were very distinctive not
only were they larger but their flat
heads were designed to match the bark of
the ash trees that they lived in so they
could plug up their calling these nest
entrances and act like living armored
doors now I was little hesitant to draw
any conclusions based off my friends
advice especially considering that the
species was supposed to live in the
south not in Pennsylvania I put this in
the back of my mind and we continued to
document the rest of the ants in our
yard until early June at which time our
school year had just ended my brother
and I came home after our last final
exam and something on a tree caught our
eye it was a major worker the ants had a
flat reddish head and was undoubtedly a
gate keeper and this was amazing
we learned that gate keeper ant colonies
do not produce major workers until
they’re over three years old so not only
did the discovery of the major worker
allow us to confirm our identification
it also meant that the species had been
as
in Pennsylvania from quite some time and
went on to suggest that these ants could
in fact be native this is one of the
most inspiring experiences in our time
researching ants the discovery of this
species in our own front yard changed
the way we looked at the society events
over the past summer we had the
opportunity to visit California and
Georgia in the Sierra Nevada mountains
we found large armored ants that
preferred high altitudes and low oxygen
while in Atlanta we found small delicate
ants that enjoyed the humidity and
intense heat of the south and although
we found these exotic ants fascinating
when we came home we gained a new level
of respect for our native species as we
realized how truly beautiful and unique
they were through our experience we were
able to take a step back from our phones
and computers and allowed ourselves to
become immersed in the wonderful world
that we live in we’ve learned a lot
about ants but we’ve learned even more
about ourselves we learned that a
passion for anything could change your
perceptions of wonder and beauty we
learned that there is beauty all around
us if we could just take a moment to
notice it many times we feel that all
inspiring experiences should involve
expensive trips to exotic locations and
faraway places but all we had to do was
step outside the past two years have
been tremendously eye-opening for us not
only because we discovered an elegant
sophisticated world outside our front
door but because we took the time to
step away from technology and appreciate
the natural beauty around us through our
experiences we’ve cultivated a wealth of
knowledge and gained an extraordinary
set of skills that we would have never
known about if we had not discovered the
magnificent world of ants we’ve been
able to learn about indigenous species
and how to raise a colony from a single
queen and from our work we’ve been
fortunate enough to meet renowned
experts in the field out of our love for
ants we’ve had the opportunity to help
others discover this beautiful society
and have given them the chance to see
firsthand the incredible opportunities
that can arise from slowing down to
appreciate the beauty of the natural
world
and although watching an ant colony can
allow one to immerse themselves in
nature there are countless other forms
of beauty that are readily accessible to
pretty much everyone in fact beauty can
be found everywhere throughout the world
to find it we simply need to take a
moment to disconnect from technology and
connect with our surroundings if you’ve
ever had a desire to learn more about
nature whether it be about a flower in
your backyard or bats in the night sky
we would like to encourage you to take a
little time out of your day to explore
your interest you’ll be astonished by
what you find thank you
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