Ant Food Preference Experiment

My initial hypothesis was that the mealworm would eat mostly oats.

Ant food preference experiment. Ants need food for fuel just like humans and require a diet of proteins carbs and lipids in varying quantities. I predicted this because out of all the food choices i thought oats was the closest food to what a mealworm ate in the wild. Ask your child these questions. By using a lamp to generate a thermal gradient exploring sociality do solitary ants live as long as ants in a group etc.

Take your pets for instance. Take pictures for displaying at the science fair. Ant experiment how to. The objective of this is experiment is to find out what food the ant likes best out of the food below.

Consumers question food production practices and demand greater transparency in the supply chain because the distances between place of production and place of consumption have grown larger and become increasingly nontransparent la trobe acott 2000 many consumers have reoriented themselves towards local food i e. Discuss the experiment with you child. After conducting our experiment we found that our mealworm ate 1 gram each of the fish food the apple and the oats. Just be sure to include at least one of each type of food.

The purpose of our experiment was to test the food preference of a mealworm. Your dog requires about 30 percent protein in his diet but your cat requires. Experiment 2 ant food preferences. Which do they like the best.

Every day for a week place a small amount of various types of food in a shallow lid. Grease ants like protein based food but they ll chow down on other types of nourishment if fatty foods aren t available. Food that has traveled only short distances or towards food. Questions before you start the experiment.

Group all the lids together in a small area accessible to ants. Some ant species like fungus while other ants love sweets. Make a chart that lists the different flavors along the top and counts the days of the experiment along the side. Specific ant species do have preferences though.

After seven days just return the ants where you found them. Students will set out prescribed ant food baits collect the baits count the ants present at each bait and share the data with a scientist. When you need to add more food open the bottle to spoon a little more into the bottle caps. Try comparing carbohydrate fat and protein.

Humile was more attracted to sugar based baits as opposed to protein based baits. Protein navigation experiments removing ant antennas and observing whether they can locate foods thermal preference experiments putting food in hot and cool environments e g. Field trials revealed that treatment baits and time after bait deployment measured in hours were highly significant for this ant species. Some good foods to try are sugar salt citrus fruit green vegetables meats granola.

Ideas for experiments are constrained only by the students imagination and whether or not they are feasible. Food preference experiments e g. You can use just one food from each group or more than one it s up to you. In this activity students learn about the major food groups and explore the diet preferences of ants by participating in a real science project.

You can place ants into a large plastic tub. And remember to put about the same amount of food in each lid. Every day put a star on the chart under the most popular ant food flavor. Scientists use these data to explore regional and global.

Test the ants reaction to different foods. The data students collect will contribute to a large database with data from students from all around the world who are doing the same experiment. Place different foods in the corners and see which the most ants go to. What foods do ants like most.