Three talented, motivated undergraduates worked in the BRC invertebrate collections for 8 weeks this summer, on various tasks associated with the NSF-sponsored project to rehouse and digitize the Rettenmeyer Army Ant Guest Collection. Andrew Doucette, an MCB major with an EEB minor, Mia Nahom, a rising sophomore with an as-yet undecided major, and Rebecca Trouern-Trend, a rising senior Illustration major.

Mia and Andrew interpreted and entered field card records, transferred and labeled vialed specimens, and ran the “Find the Mite” game for our very successful AntU day. Beck continued the work started by intern Sam Stine, and mounted examples of several hundred army ant colonies to be imaged for the AAGC database. She also is establishing an imaging protocol and taking images.

Mia Nahom was an integral part of the AAGC team this summer. Although she had finished only a year of college, Mia proved exceptionally capable at a variety of tasks associated with NSF-sponsored project to rehouse and digitize the Rettenmeyer Army Ant Guest Collection. She mastered interpreting hand-written field cards and entering pertinent data from them; she learned how to scan microscope slides and edit the images for web access. Mia also tracked down taxonomic changes and organized specimens.

For more stories about the students’ work during this summer visit our   page.

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