Small wonders: A tiny tiny ant from Panama

Jan 02, 2015 • 6:03 AM UTC

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Manu Prakash

I am a faculty at Stanford and run the Prakash Lab at Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. Foldscope community is at the heart of our Frugal Science movement - and I can not tell you how proud I am of this community and grassroots movement. Find our work here: http://prakashlab.stanford.edu

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I am out in the field in Panama (Bocas del Toro right now); and carrying my Foldsope with me. It’s often believed that insects are visible by naked eye, although when you come to a bio-diverse place like Panama, you quickly realize a large number of insect species are quiet small. For example, while typing this post, my screen is covered with small dots that fly, walk and run so fast, I can not even get a glimpse. And they exactly match the “dot” at the end of this sentence.
So I decided to trap one under my Foldscope and see some fantastic details. An advantage of small insects is multi-fold; firstly since they are small, they transmit a lot of light and hence are transparent enough to do imaging. Secondly, when it comes to speciation, since they are not often even seen in a casual walk, I am wondering how well known the groups and classes for small insets are? I guess we will find it.
I choose an ant as a starting point. This ant was unusual because of a it’s uncharacteristic “drunkard” like walk. Also, it walks or runs (whatever you prefer in insect speak) really fast.
Take a look:

This is clearly an ant species. If you can name it, please leave a comment below.
Some people asked how I do live imaging on Ants, so I will describe the brief and simple method here.
Methods:
1. I use the provided single-sided tape; you can use any single sided transparent tape.
2. I bring the tape close to ant to gently stick and pick it up. This is crucial – you need to do this gently, so as not to squash the ant but just pick it due to stiction with the tape.
3. Bring it close to either a slide or another tape.
4. I gently put the tape down while creating a little air bubble around the ant. I do this by buckling the tape inwards and attaching the far ends of the tape.
5. That’s it – this create a tiny bubble around the ant with a live ant trapped in the same.
6. Watch the movie to see features you would see in a live ant..
Observations:
1. I could clearly see holes in the head of an ant. These are breathing holes spread all across the body of most insects. I was surprised how clearly visible they are.
2. You can see hemolymph (insect blood) inside the body of the ant.
3. The big surprise is those lipid like vesicles/droplets inside the abdomen. Quiet surprised to see so much activity while the lipid droplets are jumping around.
4. Watch the leg muscles. They are quiet large relative to the size of the ant – maybe a clue for why they run so fast.
Next, I will try to figure out what those large vesicle like structures are. I have not seen them often in other ant species.
cheers
Manu