HMC: School of Arts and Crafts

After spending a summer at the HMC Bee Lab, I’ve realized the many ways that research can be interdisciplinary. Within our lab, we had two coders working on machine learning and image recognition, an engineer working on drone flights and drone “calibration”, and two biologists working on field ecology and animal behavior. I was one of these biologists and although I did a lot of science-y and biology-y things like read scientific papers, plan experiments, and collect data, my lab mates and I joked that my job was even more interdisciplinary because it involved a lot of arts and crafts.

As Xingyao wrote in a previous blog post, molecular biology research is very different from ecology research. One of the defining differences is that molecular biology experiments are often very controlled, with many protocols that are already set in stone by other researchers in the field. For example, if someone wanted to purify a protein, there are widely accepted, tried-and-true protocols that describe the buffers to use, the research instruments needed, and the tests to perform to make sure that the protein is isolated. There are also specific instruments that help perform common, albeit fancy-sounding, research tasks like polymerase chain reaction (to duplicate DNA) and gel electrophoresis (to separate DNA or proteins by size). 

On the other hand, ecological research can require a lot of DIY. After all, there probably isn’t a large industry around making ant nests or ant mazes, both of which I needed for my experiment on turtle ants this summer. We were continuing research on turtle ant nest choice, and we were interested in understanding the structures of their nest networks. Unlike most ants, turtle ants live in multiple nests per colony. Also, most of the ants you see live in tunnels underground while turtle ants live in trees. In trees, turtle ants can't build tunnels or nesting sites wherever they wish, so nesting sites and the pathways between them are limited resources that can be frequently destroyed if branches fall down. As a result, we think that nest networks that have many short connections between nests are less risky. If one pathway is destroyed, they still have other ways of accessing the resources in a nest. We decided to test whether turtle ant colonies prefer nest networks that are more connected and compact by making an arena with two sections that the ants could move into: one with nests that are more connected and closer to one another, and another with nests that are less connected and farther apart.

Figure 1: The arena for the experiment. The ants start out in the O nest. The nests in the R section are more connected and compact while the nests in the D section are less. 

Once we designed the arena in our heads, it was time to make it a reality. First, we had to solve the problem of making an arena that the turtle ants couldn’t escape from. Pro: there is a solution called Fluon Insect-A-Slip that makes insects slip on a surface so that they can’t crawl out of a container. Con: turtle ants are tree-dwellers that are especially good at climbing, so a normal application of Insect-A-Slip isn’t enough. And thus, I spent hours in the lab trying to perfect the art of applying Insect-A-Slip on plastic boxes. (It sounds easy but trust me, I’ve learned the hard way that it’s not). After over 100 attempts, I made enough boxes for 3 arenas.

Figure 2: Failed attempts of applying fluon on plastic boxes. The fluon should be smooth, with no streaks or bubbles.

Second, we had to make nests for the ants to move into. We started by making a few prototypes that we hoped would make the nests seem more natural, but we eventually settled on making nests that we had used in previous experiments to keep the nests the same. Then, with the help of my lab mate Matt Crane and high schoolers Anthony Perez, Noah Libeskind, and Rajan Shivaram, the Bee Lab became a Turtle Ant Nest-Building factory, churning out nests made from tape, microscope slides, and custom-cut cardboard and plastic blocks.

Figure 3: The materials needed to make the turtle ant nests

Third, we had to make bridges to connect the boxes in the arena. As I started making the bridges from cardstock I found in the lab, I realized that my adventures with arts and crafts in the Bee Lab actually helped me think more like a scientist. I couldn’t have used any random paper to make the bridges. Instead, I had to consider its qualities in the context of my experiment: How thick should the paper be to stay intact for the duration of my experiment? What texture should it have to allow ants to climb up and navigate the arena easily? What color should it be to contrast the black color of adult turtle ants and the white color of turtle ant brood when we film colony movement? After all of these considerations, I finally finished making the arena for my experiment!

Figure 4: One of the three arenas for the experiment

Apart from building the arena, I also met other challenges along the way by building my own solutions. For instance, I noticed that there was mold growing in the boxes where the ants are normally kept. There was condensation on the sides of the boxes and I realized that the humid conditions in the box were allowing mold to grow. To fix this, we decided to promote more air flow in the box by making more holes in the lid. This then led me on a journey of borrowing a step drill bit (which lets you make very big holes by starting out small and building up) from the engineering department, navigating the Libra Complex (a series of underground maze-like pathways at HMC), taking and (eventually) passing the HMC Machine shop quiz, and going to the MakerSpace to learn how to drill my own holes. As a result, I got a much greater exposure to HMC and learned to use more resources outside the lab.

Figure 5: Drilling more holes in the lids of the turtle ant boxes

Now, I look back with a sense of accomplishment for all the things that I built this summer. I love the hands-on and creative components of ecology research, and I look forward to a lot more arts and crafts in the Bee Lab.

Figure 6: Some arts and crafts supplies you can find in the Bee Lab

Media Credits

All of the figures were taken/made by the author.