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Ant

The ImportANTS of Ants

The primary goal of our outreach program, The ImportANTS of Ants, is to communicate scientific topics to elementary school children, using ants as examples.  We also seek to employ the Red Imported Fire Ant (RIFA) as a tool for teaching children about native and invasive species, as well as caring for the environment.  By utilizing ants in our program, we hope to spark the children’s interest in environmental protection and the sciences in general

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Ant Features and Social Structures

Utilizing interactive web presentations, we taught the students about the major body parts of ants, unique chemical senses of ants, and castes present within ant colonies (queens, drones, and workers).  These presentations were supplemented with videos, coloring sheets, and an "ant body part craft," which allowed students to construct their own ants with Styrofoam balls, toothpicks, and pipe cleaners.

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Native and Invasive Species

We used two web presentations to introduce the students to the concepts of native and invasive species and the impact of each species type on the environment.  In each presentation, we provided the students with example species prevalent in Florida (e.g., the American alligator as a native species example and the lionfish as an invasive species example).  During the invasive species presentation, we highlighted the Red Imported Fire Ant (RIFA) as an especially damaging invasive species, and we discussed common ways to limit the spread of invasive species (e.g., mindful pet ownership).

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Long-Term Goals

Our plan is to continue visiting the same schools in person, as well as to complement those visits with online lectures and interactions.  By increasing the students' exposure to our program, our program will become longer and will be more likely to impact the students.  Another opportunity we would like to repeat is the chance to immerse teachers in summer in-laboratory training on ant and soil microbiome studies.  In the future, we hope to modify our material to optimize our impact on young students.  We would also like to reevaluate our effectiveness in delivering the program after another year of teaching students.

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