Day 3: First Field Day

Started off the day with breakfast and went to our classroom area for our first field day. We met in the classroom around 8:30 in the morning to start heading out. We got a quick rundown of what the plan was and we headed out. We hiked on a gravel road to the locations of the leafcutter ants that our instructors Ibraheim and Gabriel had found early that morning. 

There are two different types of leafcutter ants that we are going to be studying while we are here and they are the Atta and Acromyrmex leafcutter ants. The main difference is that the Atta have larger colonies that are in the ground and the Acromyrmex have much smaller colonies that are in the sides of hills, walls of dirt, or trees. We stopped at some colonies that were in the side of a dirt hill to get our first real look at a colony in person. Ibraheim started digging right into the colony as a quick demo to show us how its done. It took almost no time at all to get to the fungus garden that we are looking for. He quickly got it and the queen leafcutter ant out of the colony and into a plastic container for later research. 

After the Acro demo, we moved along the road to some Atta colonies to get a demo on those ants. Again, Ibraheim was quick to act and started digging into the colony with his shovel. It took him a bit longer to get to the fungus this time but he got there. We watched as he took out the fungus and queen from yet another colony of leafcutter ants. 

After the demo, we got to more hiking along the road to see a large colony and to know how big these structures can get. While we were looking, Gabriel got a soldier ant from the large colony to show us what they look like. A soldier ant is an ant that is the main line of defense against larger invaders to the colony such as an anteater. He let it walk on him to show its size and it ended up biting him and drawing some blood. After the large colony, it was our turn to dig for ants. We got into our groups and started digging each into our own colony to try and replicate Ibraheims demonstration. 

Eventually, each group had at least one fungus garden and queen in their possession. After the morning science, we went to lunch. Lunch was the first food that we were more familiar with It was spaghetti  with a delicious meat sauce with a side of garlic bread. 

After lunch we took a tractor and trailer to a nearby trail but first we made a stop at a butterfly garden involved with seeds of change. There goal there was to study and learn more about the butterflies and the chemicals they produce. The caterpillars of one of the species produces a chemical thought to be able to be used in pharmaceuticals and as medicines, so the work done at the gardens is good for the local community and maybe eventually for the world. 

After we finished our time at the butterfly gardens we got back in the tractor trailer and headed to the trail. At the trail the mud was notably deeper but the hike was still very fun. At the end of the trail there was a big surprise of a river area that we could all go swimming. Everyone had a great time swimming and playing in the rapids around the area lots of pictures were taken in the process as well. once we got back it was time for more science. 

We all came back to the classroom to review the results for yesterdays experiment we learned bout the statistics used in real life experiments. After that short lesson It was time for dinner. This time we had ham we a delicious sauce. After the rather uneventful dinner It was time to finish up tonight's science. We watched some videos talking about the things we had learned previously and learned some new things too. Overall a very fun day.

Todays blog post was written by Zach and Quinn.