Leaf Cutting Ant Forum

Great work Jamie.. perhaps they can explain their choice of clip colour..?

That's great! I recently emailed them to ask them how they heated the domes and how it's ventilated. They sent me an email replying:

Eloise,
Thank you for your curiosity and inquiry:
The exhibit is free standing in an open exhibit gallery that is very dry (air-conditioned/heated to 20-30% rel. Hum). But the glass (!) domes are inside the larger glass case which only has a very tiny heater with fan that keeps the environment around the domes at about 25C with the exhibit hall being closer to 20-22C. For energy savings, you may not keep your home at that temperature and may need a larger heater for the enclosure.
The glass domes are sitting on gypsum blocks (“hydro stones”) that act a bit as buffer for the humidity, but also allows us to add water if needed from the bottom (they are sitting in a hidden steel tray that we can add water. Most of the moisture comes from the browse/mulch/compost the ants carry in.
Each dome (modified laboratory glassware) has several portals that can either be used to connect to the glass tubes, or covered and closed off with a fine mesh cap as ventilation.
We do occasionally have condensation on the insides if we added too much water but probably keep them generally a bit drier than ideal, though we have sufficient fungal growth usually.

Best regards,

RichardP wrote:Great work Jamie.. perhaps they can explain their choice of clip colour..?

Ha ha I'm sure, you can ask that one

Eloise that is fantastic! Really impressive you took the time to contact them and get such great feed back. The tray underneath is really interesting and seems a new method of adding moisture to a basically soil-less set up, well to me anyway. Be interesting to see if Andrew has heard of/used it.
They do seem very helpful so hopefully they will join.
Jamie

deansie26 wrote:Eloise that is fantastic! Really impressive you took the time to contact them and get such great feed back. The tray underneath is really interesting and seems a new method of adding moisture to a basically soil-less set up, well to me anyway. Be interesting to see if Andrew gas heard of/used it.
They do seem very helpful so hopefully they will join.
Jamie

Eloise can be our official International Ambassador!
I have not either used that technique before or seen it in use.
Really interesting and great that we have homed in on this and turned up some new info. Great work, the A team. Bit of a blow its not in England. Do we know what species it is.

I'm not sure actually, Eloise?

Would have loved the scenario of Jamie going to Durham Museum and the blank looks on their faces as Jamie was treating them all like idiots, showing them pictures, showing them the name of the museum and them all thinking about phoning someone who might have lost a mental patient. Opportunity missed there I fear.

Wasn't far away from it, would have been a proper fail lol. I couldn't get over how my wife and her family had never heard about or visited this place in Durham, just down the road!

And over an Ocean :p,

deansie26 wrote:I'm not sure actually, Eloise?

I would do it if you paid me! I didn't realise it was in America till I looked up the website! My mum was planning a trip for the weekend!

Fantastic, it should be the forum trap. We should erase any mention of where it actually is and see if we can get any new members to go to Durham to have a look.