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\nArya Massarat \u201920 is working on an automated method for mapping the species of flowering plants frequented by bees in a landscape. \u201cWe have drone images of landscapes in which honey bees forage for nectar and pollen,\u201d he says. \u201cMy method stitches these images together, uses computer vision algorithms to identify plants within the images and then automatically labels each plant by its species. At large scales, creating the maps that my method produces is difficult to do manually because bees can travel vast distances in search of resources. We hope my method will allow the lab to create many of these maps automatically. This will allow the lab to ask interesting questions about how the layout and composition of the species of plants in a landscape affect the honey bee colonies within it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elena Romero \u201920 is working on her senior thesis, which studies turtle ants. \u201cOne turtle ant colony often lives in multiple nests at the same time. I am primarily using statistics to investigate how turtle ants allocate colony members to the colony\u2019s different nests,\u201d she says. \u201cI really enjoy getting to work with the data from previous experiments we\u2019ve run in the lab. I find the data to be really interesting and complex. It seems like something new is always popping up.\u201d<\/p>\n
This structure, built to hold 10 ant nests, is the latest iteration in a design developed in the Bee Lab. \u201cThese ants live in trees, with multiple nests in hollow cavities in twigs,\u201d says Donaldson-Matasci, describing the structure to Bradley Gonmiah \u201923 and daughter, Irene. \u201cEach little red tube on a blue stand is a nest mimicking those cavities. The structure is our attempt to mimic the three-dimensional space that the ants have to navigate when walking between nests. We want to know how the possible pathways between nests might affect which cavities the ants choose to nest in and how they use those nests. Do they put all their babies in nests that are easily accessible? Spread them across many nests? Try to put them in places where it\u2019s easy to quickly move them?\u201d<\/p>\n
Marylin Roque \u201921 is one of the students who designed the multi-nest structure. An engineering major with a strong interest in biology, Roque is enthusiastic about her work. \u201cWhat could be better than designing something for a biological application?\u201d she says. Roque spent summer 2019 developing the multilevel structure parameters based on field observations, information from previous experiments using earlier versions of the platform and functionality set by experimental needs. After designing the parts of the structure with AutoCAD software, Roque laser cuts them in acrylic. Finally, she glues the pieces together. \u201cThe last step is my absolute favorite part of the process,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause there is a rush of emotion either from knowing that all calculations, hard work and patience paid off, or from realizing that it\u2019s time to go back to step one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bee Lab researchers use tiny radio frequency identification tags to track the ants\u2019 movement with lasers. Ants are anesthetized with nitrogen gas and gently sandwiched in a foam disk with their thorax exposed. With the help of a microscope, the scientist glues the tiny tag, which looks like a single piece of silver glitter, to the ant\u2019s thorax. Tag attached, the sleeping ant is scanned with a laser, activating a circuit on the tag that broadcasts a unique number. The number is automatically added to the colony database.<\/p>\n
The nest platforms are placed in \u201carenas,\u201d where researchers can observe and record ant behavior. Lasers pointed at each nest scan the ants as they enter and exit, recording their movement.<\/p>\n
Humans aren\u2019t the only ones having to adjust to online coursework during the COVID-19 pandemic. Donaldson-Matasci brought the turtle ants home with her so that she wouldn\u2019t have to return to the lab to feed them. \u201cSo far, it\u2019s not too bad,\u201d she says. \u201cIt took a little while to gather up all the things they need and set up a space in my house. But now that\u2019s done, it will actually be easier here. They need to be fed once a week and my daughter, Irene, enjoys helping me.\u201d One change Irene implemented was to rename the colonies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Turtle ants seem to have a way of crawling into the hearts of their researchers. Nora Nickerson \u201922 is so fond of the creatures, she has created illustrations of them to describe her research. Donaldson-Matasci loves ants and bees, but she says, \u201cIn my opinion, the turtle ants are just adorable, and they are fascinating partly because so much is still unknown about how they behave and what they do in the wild. That means that there are lots of interesting questions open for exploration.\u201d<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In biology professor Matina Donaldson-Matasci\u2019s HMC Bee Lab, scientists study how colonies of social insects, such as bees and ants, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-study"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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