This video segment from Evolution: "Evolutionary Arms Race" tells the story of the leafcutter ant and the fungus it farms -- an example of mutually beneficial symbiosis.
This collection of images of six different creatures, including insects and carnivorous vertebrates, illustrates the wide range of mouth types that exist within the animal kingdom.
Farming ants might sound like a crazy thing to do unless you might like to eat chocolate covered ants. It turns out we can learn a lot from ants and the best way is to build your own ant farm.
There are several different ways to get ants for an ant farm, depending on when you would like to start the farm and how long you would like for your ant farm to last.
This segment is from an interview with ant specialist and biologist E.O. Wilson, filmed for Evolution: "Evolutionary Arms Race."
In this exercise, students place food at various distances from an ant hill or nest. Ants are then observes as they find the bait and lead other ants to it. At the completion of the exercise, students construct a graph which shows the establishment of trails, recruitment of workers, and depletion of the bait.
Ants build ant hills as a result of digging underground. They dig several different chambers underground to live in and raise young ants in. As they make these chambers, the ants bring the unneeded soil to the surface, forming what we see as an ant hill.
Video interviews with twenty Smithsonian scientists introduce students to the wide variety of work in the sciences. Students will learn the diverse pathways that these scientists took to enter their fields and they will see that many kinds of people become scientists.
From something as small and complex as a chromosome to something as seemingly simple as the weather, sex determination systems vary significantly across the animal kingdom. Biologist and teacher Aaron Reedy shows us the amazing differences between species when it comes to determination of gender. A quiz, thought provoking question, and links for further study are provided to create a lesson around the 6-minute video. Educators may use the platform to easily "Flip" or create their own lesson for use with their students of any age or level.
Students explore pollination using two exercises: an ant- and a butterfly-activity. In the ant-exercise, students generate hypotheses for why reports of ant pollination are rare, test one or more hypothesis, and present their findings. In addition to this open-ended inquiry investigation, instructions are also provided for a structured activity in which students germinate pollen and test whether ant-secretions inhibit pollen growth as has been proposed in the scientific literature. In the butterfly-exercise, students test whether butterflies can learn to associate certain color cues with a sugar reward.
This exercise uses ants (considered by some to be the "scoundrels in the pollination drama!") to test questions about the morphological and behavioral features that permit insects to be good pollinators. Students are presented with the fact that ants are abundant insects, but fewer than 20 plant species worldwide have been documented as ant-pollinated. Students generate specific hypotheses for the rarity of ant pollination, and design experiments to test their hypotheses. This exercise has both a field and indoor component so that it can be successful even if it is raining, and ants are inactive outdoors.
