Respect the Pseudomyrmex sp.

It's pretty much all Jay Sobel's fault. He told me I should give Craig Guyer a guitar and get him to play some bluesy tunes.  It was a great idea, but resulted in my staying up until 1am when I had to get up again at 6 so that I could be collecting data by 7.  I'm so tired!  

So I went out to take data on ant acacias, including diameter at breast height.  That involves wrapping a tape measure around the stem.  The ants (Pseudomyrmex sp.) don't like it, so they bite and sting the tape measure, and once in a while the unfortunate (innocent!) soul HOLDING the tape measure.  Bites aren't so bad, but stings feel like hot needles being pushed slowly in and pulled slowly out of sting site.  My hands are still stiff and sore, 14 hours later!  I have to give the ants credit, though.  They have impressive defenses.

The results of our preliminary experiments were dramatic, and we're all excited about it.  But I'll have to give you all more on that later, because I have to go to bed!  Besides, we haven't analyzed the data yet -- but as a teaser, it was the kind of data you don't have to analyze to see that it's spectacular.  

My friend Raffica at Kellogg Biological Station/ Michigan State University offered to upload photos that I email to her (for some reason I can email them out, but not post them to the blog), so hopefully in the next few days there will be pictures to go with past and future posts.  

Really fast, the bird of the day today was the Bare-throated Tiger-Heron.  A pair have started building a nest in a tree right outside my bedroom.  I think I forgot the tri-colored heron yesterday, too.  I'm going to bed now.