Supervised by Bob Vander Meer

Transferring fire ant workers from one colony to another for an aggression test.

This summer Mark Musselman worked on a study of diet and aggression in colonies of red imported fire ants. Nine of the colonies were fed crickets, and sucrose in water. Six additional colonies were given a similar diet which also included 3-iodo-tyrosine. The colonies given the chemical supplement were found to exhibit more aggressive behavior.

Feeding crickets to the ants.