On June 6 we placed 16 vials, without bait, in two different habitats including a forested region and a grassy region. These vials were left overnight and were pitfalls for incoming ants. After 24 hours, the vials were checked and the ants were collected already submerged in ethyl alcohol. The ethyl alcohol helps to preserve the ants. Also, on the same day, 30 min. traps were set in the same habitats. However, these traps were intended to bait ants with the hot dogs. Once again, these ants were submerged in ethyl alcohol and preserved. However, we yielded low number of ants compared to the number actually captured. This is due to experimenal errors. The most significant of which occured during the collection of those captured in the baited traps. While collecting the ants, some were accidentally discarded while disposing of the hot dog bait which was saturated with ants. Then, these ants were taken to lab and identified via a microscope.

We found 5 different morphological species in our experiment. We also noted many were of different sizes but the size spectrum was continous in all the different morphological species indicating that the sizes were due to age and did not contribute to differences in species. We found more ants in our hotdog baited traps as compared to the pitfall traps due to the baits attraction for the ants compared to the pitfall traps which capture occurs due to chance. Our data indicates that morpho species 5 was only found in the grassy 30 miniute bait traps. We hyphothesized that the reason for this is because the bait attracts a larger diversity of insects including ants. This is because when ants leave the nest to find food, they leave a pheromone trail leading to the food so more ants can come help gather. This is a reason why there are more morpho species of ants. We found that a greater number of morphs of ants and number of ants resided in the grassy environment as opposed to the forested environment. This directly corelates with Identification Guide to the Ant Genera of the World which states that fire ants "are much more common and widely distributed in dryer, disturbed sites." The grassy land in our environment was greatly exposed to sunlight and the human interactions by the kids would cause the ants to want to build their nests in such areas. There was not much of a difference among sites except that there was a little hill on the grassy sunny side. A statistical analysis which could be used to determine the number of fire ants we found vs. the number we obtained could be determined via a chi-square test. However, we were uncertain of what the expected yield should be. Furthermore, this hampered our efforts to conduct a chi square analysis. Although we do not know the exact statistical results, we can however conclude, as expected, that there is a greater yield of fire ants than other ants. We found that of the 307 ants collected, 283 (or 80%) were fire ants.

The Beautiful World of Fire Ants