Earthwatch caterpillars

Learn about Dr. Lee Dyer's Earthwatch caterpillar-climate change project at Sagehen that brings high school students into the field to help the University of Nevada at Reno scientists with their research.

Project sponsored by the Durfee Foundation.

"Ants: The Invisible Majority"

Sagehen provided stock footage for this broadcast program about ants by KQED Quest. There are shots of our slave-making ants marching out on a raid & their hosts keeping house.


QUEST on KQED Public Media.

Or watch online & read associated materials.

Sagehen's healthy meadows & fish.

UC Davis Newswatch talks to Sagehen researchers Shorty Boucher & Peter Moyle about what they are learning about the connection between meadow health, fish populations, diversity, & management policy changes due to insights gained from Sagehen research.

2006.

Ant Ranchers.

This is a short clip of ants farming aphids on a willow branch at Sagehen.

The ants protect & herd the aphids so they can "milk" them for their nutritious honeydew.

As bizarre as this idea of complex agricultural behavior seems in such a tiny-brained animal, several other species of ants are also farmers. For instance, Leaf-cutter Ants march those sail-like bits of leaves back to the nest where they chew them up for use as mushroom-growing medium. They don't eat the leaves, just the fungus.

Perhaps the scariest insect farmers are the Vampire Ants that occur a little north of Sagehen. Like all adult ants, the Vampires have a throat restriction that won't allow them to eat solid food. They hunt centipedes, but there is not enough juice to keep the adults nourished. So they feed the chunks of centipede to their larva--who lack the throat constriction--then puncture the babies' abdomens & drink their blood! The procedure is not fatal & all adult ants apparently bear scars from this bizarre adaptation.

00:19 [.MOV-548 KB]

Why are there so many butterflies around all of a sudden?

UC Berkeley Ph.D. Candidate Ryan Hill explains the sudden appearance of butterflies in the Sierras every spring.

Copyright: 2007, UC Regents

04:30

Watch on YouTube [below], or download a higher-res version here: Mac [.mov-9.6MB]

Television news coverage of Sagehen.

These videos are the KGO-TV segments about Sagehen that ran recently on the Bay Area ABC affiliate, apparently the largest broadcast television market in the country.

"The new Sagehen Experimental Forest." 03:33
Read article.


"Bear research at Sagehen." 03:26
Read article.


"SPLATs for Sierra forest fire management." 03:24
Read article.

Pirates of Sagehen Basin!

Ant researcher, photographer & author Mark Moffett gets interested in Sagehen's slave-raiding ants. Why do the slaves put up with it? Same reason people do--because they don't know any better. They hatch out into the red ant nest & just assume that's where they belong.

Slave-making has evolved in ants nine separate times, so it apparently works.

Polyergus breviceps are obligate social parasites, meaning that they simply can't live without their slaves: they have lost the ability to dig tunnels, gather food, care for their babies. All they do is hang around, being taken care of until it's time to go out on another raid.

The video shows Polyergus breviceps [red ants] stealing brood [eggs & pupae] from nests of the host species, Formica argentea [black ants].

Many stages of a raid are shown: the nest before a raid with no red ants apparent [they don't work except to raid]; the initial red scout heading out, the red column advancing; winged red reproducers accompanying the column & mating along the way; black ants trying to block the entrances to their home; red ants unblocking the entrance, then taking brood from the target nest; racing back to the home nest where the black ants take over care & sometimes carry or drag the exhausted red ants.

The new black brood will hatch out & acquire the scent of the new home nest, then go right to work taking care of the red queen's eggs.

Meanwhile, the mated reproducers will lose their wings & attempt to find a black ant nest then kill its black queen, taking over egg laying duties & converting the nest to a red ant nest with black slaves. There will be no more black ant eggs produced in these attacked nests.

A little creepy, eh?



Download this short ants reel here.