An efficiAnt post!

I was thinking about my second post, and I just discovered that I am missing to talk about my job! So, since this blog is a tool for us to get to know each other, I decided to write about my work and achieve two goals with one unique post! That's why I am efficient!

As I told in the last post, I was working as a trainee researcher at the Insect Ecology Lab (UFMG). Our lab has a lot of graduate and undergraduate students, and is Led by Professor Frederico Neves. We have people working with butterflies, bettles, trees' herbivores, termites and, finally, ants - the group that I belong. And we have more than the ants' beautiful to choose work with them.

Sometimes ants can carry seeds, and help them to germinate!
(from: http://www.alexanderwild.com/keyword/ant%20carrying%20seed/
1708508918_5m4FBpJ#!i=1752449576&k=Cz2G3tq&lb=1&s=A

A really interesting thing is that they are widespread, that means they are in the whole world! It makes our job easier when we compared the work of a scientist that want to study the galapagos' caterpillars - who obviously are found just in Galapagos, just when the butterflies reproduce. If we are talking about a widespread group of animals, we need to expect a diverse group too, whereas they need to handle with all kinds of environmentals. Diversity can be a problem for the identification of the species, but we are really lucky! We have a lot of ways to identify ants! Moreover, the species number is proportional to their roles. For example, they can (re)cycling the organic matter, defending some plants from their enemies, dispersing seeds and aerating the soil. And c'mon! They are so cute! But there is one more important thing to tell here: they can be bioindicators! And this is exactly what I was doing in my group!

Yeah! They can carry thousands of leaves!
(from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Atta_(genus))

Don't be fool! Ladybugs are vouracious aphids predators! 

And ants help the aphids avoinding these horrible enemies!

 (from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14043356) 

One amazing approach of using ants as bioindicators, is use them to indicate climate changes. Since they are everywhere, and they are adapted for their habitats, they have a pattern of occurance! So, think about it: if we know that the species A, B and C lives in regions with 20ºC, and the species D, E and F in regions with 35ºC, we can say that if the first region get warm, species D, E and F will move to there! It isn't that easy, but it's just a general idea. That is what we are doing in Brazil. We are trying to understand how the ants respond to the climates variations. For do this, we use a moutain! A mountain is a environment that naturally changes its variations - you just need to climb and then the climate changes.

A image of our area of work: the amazing Serra do Cipó!

A part of the group!! The efficiAnts!

I hope you enjoyed the post! Cause I liked to wrote all of this!! Now, I am very eager to know the Vermont's ants! Let's catch them!