2017 Trinity High School Costa Rica Science Research Trip

Day 2: At the beginning of the day we went out in the field looking for leaf cutter ants. This was a great chance to feel what its like to be a real scientist working in team groups. Today we also took out fungus gardens from the leaf cutter ant colonies to take back and do lab work with them. Towards the end of the day we watched some short movies on leaf cutter ants to help us understand a little more about them. This was great because some of the facts that were in the video I did not know about. Atta ants can have over five million ants in one colony. A great surprise was seeing doctor Adrian in one of the short movies describing how a fungus can take over a bullet ant.  The food at Finca La Anita is absolutely incredible. It is all produced here at the farm. Every day there is a new juice of the day which is very exciting. There is also a lot of new flavors that i have never tried before and in all is very fun. Will Mullen   Students observing a leaf cutter ant hig

Jon Michael, a rising junior at Trinity High School, and his team recently extracted leaf cutter ant colonies from the rain forest. They have placed them in a controlled environment that will be used to conduct experiments over the next few days.

Noah Tuell, sophomore at Trinity High School, and his group just extracted their first leaf cutter ant fungus garden. This species, Acromyrmex, is different from the Atta that we are after, but unique because it shows winged males.

John Hughes, a rising senior at Trinity High School, speaks about his first experience on the Costa Rica Science Research Trip.