On the western edge of campus, where the sand bluff known as Indian Hill faces the Ashley River, Cadet Hunter Page is a customary figure in a camouflage uniform with a compass, a caliper and a field journal. The biology major from Las Vegas is on a hunt for ants.
Ant mounds, to be exact.
As a freshman learning how to polish his brass, Page mentally checked off the prerequisites he needed to attend medical school. Research, he had heard, would make him a more competitive candidate, which is why he approached biology professor Paul Nolan, Ph.D., about a project. “Come back and see me when you’re a sophomore,” said Nolan, an animal behavior scientist.
Now a rising senior, Page is in his third semester of a four-semester-long independent study under Nolan’s supervision. Page is studying the peculiar tendency of the pyramid ant, formally named
the Dorymyrmex bureni, to build and rebuild its crater-shaped mounds in a certain direction. The ants, Page found, could build their mounds in all directions, but once they built a mound in one direction, they were committed. Using a caliper and a compass, Page recorded the data for more than 60 mounds—diameter, height and direction— and discovered that all but three displayed a pointed slant. After recording the data of each mound, Page wiped the mound flat and observed again and again that, when the ants rebuilt their mounds, they were slanted in the same direction.
“This was interesting,” Page wrote in his research abstract, “because two ant colonies less than a yard away from one another would have their mound originally built in two different directions and keep building their mound in that original direction, even after the mound was wiped away multiple times.”
Page believes that the slant of the pyramid mound, which is typically shallow, allows wind to ventilate the inside of the colony. In the next phase of his research, he plans to test his theory using a fan and isolating other variables such as wind, sunlight and rain. If the ants build the mound in the direction of the wind current, it will support Page’s hypothesis that the ants position their habitat in a specific direction to ventilate the mound.
As we were preparing to publish High Impact, we were saddened to learn that longtime biology professor Paul Nolan, Ph.D., who is referenced in this article, passed away. We mourn his loss and are grateful for his years of service and his dedication to the scores of biology cadets he taught and mentored.