Animal Tunneling Patterns

In order to partake in any lab study of ants, the facilities needed to contain them must be built. Building ant farms is a very simple process that can be done cheaply and on a small scale by using jewel cd cases. The exact dimensions of the ant farms built were 142 mm tall x 125 mm wide x 5mm deep. A total of twelve ant farms were built using this method. The ant farms were then filled with organic material, mainly partially decomposed wood from a stump, from where the ants have a colony in order to ensure a suitable habitat. In addition, the soil was also sifted in order to remove any large chunks to ensure optimal tunneling conditions. After the ant farms have been filled, the Black Carpenter Ants were collected. Each ant farm was filled with ten ants apiece, for a
total of one-hundred and twenty total ants being tested. After filling the ant farms with ants, they were randomly put into two different groups by using a random number generator to assign them a number of 1-12, which would correspond to the diet that they would be receiving. Numbers 1-6 were put into the normal apple group and numbers 7-12 were put into the vinegar treated apple group. The ant farms were placed into a holder and covered with cloth to ensure a dark environment, the placement of the ant farms in the holder was also randomized by using a random number generator. With the ant farms having been prepared and sorted into two groups the diet regiment begins, with the control group being fed an apple and the acidic diet group being fed an apple soaked in vinegar. The average ph of the apples used was 4.4, while the vinegar treated apples were around 2.4. The apples were first cut into eight pieces and then left to soak in the vinegar for fifteen minutes; the ph was then checked by using a ph strip to ensure it was lowered to 2.4ph. Each ant group was fed once per day with 7 grams of either the vinegar treated apples or the untreated apples, they were also given 10 ml of water per day. As Carpenter Ants are rather susceptible to low moisture levels it is extremely important to monitor moisture levels (Mankowski & Morrell 2011). Any food that had not been eaten in the previous day was removed to prevent any mold from growing and potentially harming the ants. The experiment was run for two weeks.
There were two variables that were studied: ant death rate and ant tunneling.
In order to accurately count the ants, the ant farms were placed in a refrigerator for three minutes in order to slow their movement. Measuring the amount of tunneling done per day was done by marking any new tunnels with a permanent marker and using a cloth measuring tape to measure the amount of tunneling. The measurements were taken every day before feeding the ants, which was done around 10:00 PM. Both the ant death rates and ant tunneling rates data analysis was done in Microsoft Excel. The ant death rate was measured by taking the average of amount of deaths per individual group and dividing them by the number of days the ants were studied for. The vinegar treated apple and normal apple death rates were determined by taking the average of each treatment variables death rates. For the ant tunneling rate, the total amount of tunneling done was divided by the number of days the study ran for. This number was then averaged for the normal apple and vinegar treated apple experimental groups. For both analyses the standard error and t-tests were performed in order to compare the results of the two groups to one
another.