Problem Statement

How might we track and monitor ant populations in their natural environments non invasively?

A forest's health can be monitored or diagnosed with the ant population.

Arguments

Data available

Using ants as bioindicators - https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol1/iss1/art8/#:~:text=Global-scale functional groups can,at regional or local scales.

Epigenetic ants in vineyards and grasslands - https://www.antwiki.org/wiki/images/0/02/Rosado_et_al_2012.pdf

Challenges:

Idea Space

Cited methods were developed by research groups to study ant behaviour; So 'methodolgy' is of relevance here, regardless of the aims of these studies.

  1. Videography (visible spectrum) and subsequent tracking
  2. Videography (IR) and subsequent tracking
    1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49655-3