Proyecto

So it's time for a little learning! For the class I took last month, one of the projects was a wonderfully vague little piece called our "artistic exposition" and "investigation" (essay). I'm a biology major, and I am in a wonderfully biologically intense place, so naturally I was dying to do some kind of display on the natural beauty surrounding us here. I have no idea why, but I decided to make some wire sculptures  for the artistic exposition of an animal, an insect, and a plant. And technically insects are animals but let's not go there. I also thought it would be great idea to do specific organisms with a little food-chain action going on. I contacted my cousin Theo for help since he is master ant expert, so big props go to him. I present to you first: Pseudomyrmex ferruginea.

This is to scale in terms of the size of its body parts, but the actual ant is between 5-10 mm so don't have any nightmares about this because that would be embarrassing. This ant shares a special symbiotic mutualistic association with Bullhorn Acacia plants. A colony of these ants begins when a young copulated queen ant smells out a plant, eats a hole into one of the hollow pairs of bulbous spikes, and lays 15-20 eggs. As the colony grows they move to the other spikes within the same plant, and when the colony reaches a size of 300-400 it begins to ferociously guard the plant against an array of threats. Herbivorous animals looking for a snack leave with hundreds of stings around their mouth to discourage them from returning, other insects that come in to nom on a leaf are literally stung to death, and the encroaching shade from nearby plants is quickly eliminated as the ants scurry to chew off branches or completely destroy neighboring plants. If the colony becomes large enough, it will move to other nearby Acacia trees, and if another colony approaches an already-occupied Acacia there is a bloody war to the last man/ant in which the larger colony more frequently wins. 

La Acacia cornigera. As you can see by my beautiful sculpture, the cornigera has a pair of spikes that begins from the base of leaf stalks and serves as the plants only natural defense. The cornigera can grow up to 15 meters tall, which is quite a considerable plant. Other Acacias have alkaline properties to their leaves that taste bitter upon consumption, but the lack of this in the cornigera is a huge disadvantage for its survival. It is for this reason that it desperately needs the protection of ferruginea. But why does ferruginea need cornigera? Apart from the housing within the spikes, cornigera has these lovely little structures on the end of each leaf stalk (those little orb things coming off the branches in my sculpture) called Beltian Bodies. The Beltian bodies are rich in lipids and proteins and serve as the main sustenance for the ants, although they literally have no benefit for the Acacia. For this reason it is quite obvious that over time these two organisms have co-evolved to become best buddies and provide for each others needs.

The first shocking fact that I learned (I don't know why it was so shocking, but it was to me so don't tease me) was that there are only four kinds of anteaters alive today. I'm not sure if it was shocking because I only thought there was one kind or if there were a lot more, but enough about the shock factor. The giant anteater can grow to be as long as 1.8 meters (about 6 feet), and mostly eats terrestrial ants and termites. The other three species are smaller, perhaps 30 cm at the smallest, and are arboreal so that will be the focus of this discussion. An anteater can go through about 200 mounds or colonies per day, flicking its tongue that is about twice as long as its head at a rate of about 150 licks per minute. He would get to the center of a tootsie pop(tm) in no time! The stomach of an anteater is similar to the gizzard of chickens, and it uses consumed dirt and a crushing action to aid in the digestion of the ants. And, not surprisingly, ferruginea is a minority of the total consumed ants on average. 

So what's the point? Other than really cool biology information? Well, if you must know, I made an analogy between my three organisms and the people of Latin America. The ants have a colonial mindset and ferociously protect their means to survival. Similarly, Latin Americans have a tightly-knit family and friend structure. The relationship between the Acacia and the ants represents the ingenuity of Latin America to survive in a climate that is often dangerous (ie. militant dictatorships, guerilla activity, narco-trafficking, human slave trade). The big ole anteater represents external forces that threaten the well-being and uniqueness of the people of Latin America (ie. large multinational corporations vs the farmer, infiltrations of north american culture, an ineffective or militant government). I hope you liked it! I worked pretty hard on the sculptures so I'm planning on bidding them off starting at $1000. Gotta pay for college somehow, you know!