Visit to The Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve and Biological Research Station in Albany County, New York
From EESwiki
I’m a diploma student in the behavioural ecology group of Prof. Dr. Foitzik. Currently I’m working on my diploma thesis, investigating reproductive conflicts in insect societies.
In my diploma thesis I want to find out whether queens actively inhibit workers from egg-laying by chemical control or if workers refrain from reproduction because the queen reliably indicates her greater productivity.
I carry out my research on the ant species Temnothorax longispinosus, which is perfectly suited for my experiments. Since T. longispinosus is solely native to northeastern North America it was necessary to fly to America in order to collect colonies of this species. For that reason I applied for an EES grant.
Due to the financial support of the EES I could visit the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve and Biological Research Station in Albany County, New York from June 12th to June 30th. The Preserve is one of the oldest individual biological research stations in the United States. It is located in the hill country southwest of Albany, which absolutely stunned me with its beautiful untouched nature.
The research station is surrounded by temperate deciduous forests consisting of oaks, which is the main habitat of T. longispinosus because colonies of this ant species normally live in acorns. Therefore most of the days I went to the forests near the station, collected acorns, cracked them and searched for ants. It was really fascinating to see the ants in their natural habitat, especially when I discovered large colonies of about eighty ore more individuals all living in one small acorn. In addition to my time in New York I spent two days in Boston, Massachusetts, where I collected ants, too. This will give me the opportunity to do further genetically analyses and to compare different populations.
During my trip to America I had the chance to get to know both the American people and the famous American way of life, which is definitely worth the experience. I really enjoyed this kind of lifestyle, though I can’t imagine to live like this for a longer time.
Besides my field research I also had the chance to talk to other students, Ph.D. students and scientists from all over the world, who visited the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve and Biological Research Station. I learned much about their projects and ongoing research and it also helped me a lot to improve my English. Overall I really enjoyed my trip to America and it was a great experience for me. I’m glad that the EES made this trip possible.
