STUDENT INSTRUCTIONS

Peter Wrege, from Cornell University, and his colleagues wanted to find out if ant-following birds had a positive, neutral, or negative effect on the prey capture rate of a swarm-raiding army ant species. How would you go about testing the hypothesis that ants benefit from the presence of ant-following birds by capturing more prey?

With the other students in your group, design an experiment to test the hypothesis that ants benefit from the presence of ant-following birds by capturing more prey. A hint: the researchers figured out that aggregations (clusters) of army ant workers always indicated the capture of some sort of prey by the ants. Keep in mind the following key components of any good experiment: a control (something to which to compare the treatment), replication (do it more than once), and consideration of confounding factors (what might cause differences other than what you manipulate in your experiment?).

Follow your teacher’s instructions for completion of the "Army Ant Experimental Design" handout and for reporting out.