Ant Course 2015 Captured

Couldn’t go to the 2015 Ant Course this summer in Portal, Arizona?

You can get a taste of what you missed with three videos in a playlist. The first video gives an overview of the course and the site, the second shows some cool interactions between army ants and their prey, and the third shows field researchers a mark-recapture method for estimating numbers of foragers in a given colony.

 

Next year the Ant Course is off to Mozambique (more about that in an upcoming post). Hopefully it will be back in Arizona soon.

Ant Course 2015: Arizona Here They Come

Want to learn more about ants? Have some time and money you can spend this summer? Then think about taking Ant Course 2015!

The Ant Course is going to be held August 6-16, 2015  at the Southwestern Research Station in Portal, Arizona.

southeastern-AZ

 

In case you were wondering, Portal is in southeastern Arizona on the east side of the gorgeous Chiricahua Mountains. Although it may seem like a hot, barren desert, Arizona is actually a fantastic place to study ants, with some 350+ species found here. We have honeypots, harvesters, leafcutters, and army ants, as well as bigheaded ants. etc.

Sponsored by California Academy of Sciences and Museum of Comparative Zoology (with funding from National Science Foundation), the Ant Course is intended to help individuals learn about ant field collection techniques and identification (they promise to genus).

To get you in the mood, here’s what happened when the course was offered in Arizona in 2011:


(Scary, isn’t it?)

Although the course is open to everyone, enrollment is limited to 30 people and priority will be given to students doing research. Check the Ant Course website for details and costs, as well as links to the application.

Deadline for applications:  April 1, 2015

This just might be my year to give it a try. What about you?