Meeting 2012 Minutes

Minutes from the 1212th Meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club

President Katherine Angier called the 1212th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club to order at 7:36pm on Tuesday November 9th 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting was held on Zoom. Approx. 35 members and guests were in attendance.

New business: Members are reminded to pay their dues.

The Club tentatively plans to return to in-person meetings in February 2022.

Old business: None

Our speaker was Dr. Deborah M. Gordon, Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University. Her talk was entitled The Ecology of Collective Behavior.

No ant tells another ant what to do. Collective behavior operates without central control, relying on local interactions among individuals responding to environmental conditions. Dr. Gordon described her work with two ant species, the harvester ant Pogonomyrmex barbatus which inhabits the Arizona desert, and the turtle ant, Cephalotes goniodontus, found in arboreal habitats inMexico.She described olfactory communication, its role in establishing trails, and the different behaviors seen in the two ants in response to their particular environments; for P. barbatus, habitat constraints are limited water but otherwise stable conditions, while C. goniodontus, lives with unpredictable conditions but freedom of movement.

P. barbatus colonies show varying roles for ants, including foraging and nest maintenance, that can change depending on conditions–for instance, more foraging when food is abundant and less in severe weather. A survey of P. barbatus colonies revealed the oldest colony so far is 36 years old, which correlates to the age of the queen. The survey also seems to show that colonies are dying younger, possibly in response to increased stress from climate change and droughts.

Dr. Gordon’s work with the turtle ant C. goniodontus involves understanding how the ants navigate their arboreal habitat and how they respond to disruptions in established pathways.

As new pathways are developed, they favor minimizing nodes (opportunities to get lost) rather than distance traveled.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:54.
Respectfully submitted, Andrea Golden, CEC Secretary