Marching Ants

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective was to learn if differnt colors of chalk would affect the feeding patterns of ants. My hypothesis was that "Black Chalk" would best deter the ants from visiting the bait source. Methods/Materials 1. Locate two different ant hills 2. Place pork rinds in an area near the ants hills so that the ants would find them and start to feed. 3. Once the ants were feeding count the number of visit to the bait source in a given time interval. Record the number and repeat. 4. While the ants were still feeding draw a chalk line around the bait source and count and record the number of visits to the bait source for the same time interval. Repeat this step with 4 different colors of chalk. 5. Repeat Items 3 & 4 four times in order to get adequate data. 6. Repeat 3 through 5 on the other ant hill. 7 Compare the data without chalk to the data with chalk. Results Red chalk best detered the the ants from visiting the bait source. Black was next best at detering the ants, and then green and last was blue. Blue had the least affect on the ants behavior. Conclusions/Discussion My conclusion showed that my hypothesis was not correct. My hypothesis was that black chalk would best deter the ants from visiting the bait source. Tests showed that Red did the best job and black was second. Red and Green also did a good job. The real test seemed to be that the pigment in the chalk interfered with the pheromone trails left by the ants in their feeding trails.

Competition history

• CSEF 2003 Zoology · Entry J1908

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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