Army Ants March into New Exhibition

Campus Life – UConn Today


The entrance to the Biology/Physics Building, where a new exhibit focused on army ants and their ‘guests’ will open this weekend. (Ken Best/UConn Photo)The seven four-foot ants crawling along the entrance to the Biology/Physics Building on North Eagleville Road are not a cause for alarm; instead, they invite visitors to follow them inside to view “Be Our Guest: An Exhibit on the Complex Society of Army Ants and Their Guests.”
The exhibit is the first public introduction to the Carl and Marian Rettenmeyer Army Ant Guest Collection, which is considered one of the premier collections of its kind in the world. It consists of more than two million specimens, field notes, and other material from research conducted by the late Carl Rettenmeyer, a faculty member in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from 1971 to 1996, and his wife Marian. The exhibit opens to the public on Sunday, April 30 from 1 to 5 p.m., and continues Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Rettenmeyers worked in Central and South America for 50 years studying the intricacies of the complex societies of army ants that are constantly foraging and moving along the ground, consuming up to 500,000 prey animals each day, such as earthworms, other insects, and larvae. Army ant societies are complemented by numerous “guests,” the many creatures, including mites, beetles, flies, wasps, springtails, and bristletails, that are intimately associated with the ants and benefit from their active daily life.
[The Rettenmeyers’] approach showed that what initially appeared to be a simple system was, in fact, fantastically complex. — Janine Caira
The exhibit is one of the initial results of a partnership between the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History – which Carl Rettenmeyer founded – to curate, digitize, and catalogue the Rettenmeyer collection and its associated materials under a three-year, $500,000 grant ...

Read More