How Fire Ants Form Living Balls When Faced With Water b4in.org/s4aH Solenopsis invicta – the destroyer of picnics and bane of exposed limbs everywhere – is better known by its common name, the red fire ant. Aside from S. invicta‘s propensity to swarm and attack, it turns out this insect is also one of the more talented engineers in the animal kingdom. Never is this more true than when the colony, threatened by flooding from rain, a sprinkler or a borderline psychopathic child armed only with a cup of water, streams out of the mound en masse rapidly assembling into a raft. This and other protective structures are formed by each ant gripping onto its nearest neighbor. The mystery behind this behavior is based on the fact that, individually, an ant is denser than water and is therefore at a very real risk of sinking. So just how do they manage to float to safety as a large group? “You can consider them as both a fluid and a solid,” explained David Hu of the Georgia Institute of Technology in a recent statement. Hu’s interest in S. invicta stems from the relatively large size of the insect and how that scale presents a more easily observable model of their feats of engineering. Along with Paul Foster and Nathan Mlot, Hu wanted to investigate one ant structure in particular and how the insects managed to self-assemble into that structure. To coax the ants into forming their chosen structure of study, an ant ball, the researchers gently swirled 110 ants in a beaker until they formed the living sphere. Once formed, the team immediately flash froze the ants with liquid nitrogen and then coated them with a Super Glue™ vapor to properly preserve the minute points of contact between each ant. [ Watch the Video: CT Scan For Fire Ant Rafts ] Once formed and preserved, the researchers enlisted the aid of Angela Lin and her CT scanner. “With the CT scan we can focus on individual ants and see how they are connected to their neighbors,” Hu pointed out. He went on to note that the processing of the images could only be partially automated due to the fact that it is really very difficult to ascertain where one ant ends and the other begins. More b4in.org/s4aH
Posted on: Fri, 13 Jun 2014 16:53:05 +0000
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