How To Get Rid Of Ants In The House

A horde of ants on a food-gathering mission descends upon the remains of a Keebler Sandies Pecan Shortbread cookie, breaking off tiny crumbs.

Normally such raids end with a victory march back to an underground labyrinth. But this is no picnic. It’s a science project.

After leaving out the cookie pieces for an hour, Lake Forest College biology student Jeremy Boeing will scoop up all the nearby ants, freeze them overnight and ship them to a North Carolina laboratory for identification.

The collection, carried out near the Museum Campus/11th Street Metra stop amid sniffing dogs and quizzical looks from joggers, is part of a national effort to identify and map the diversity of ants in the U.S.

Based in North Carolina, the School of Ants project is asking ordinary citizens to collect ants in metropolitan Chicago, New York and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Anyone with an index card, a plastic bag and money for cookies and shipping can participate, as long as the ants are collected by Wednesday.

Creating a map of the nation’s ants is expected to help scientists understand the movement of the insects from one region to another, investigate changes in the ant ecosystem and maybe even identify new species. Fewer than 13,000 ant species are known worldwide, and scientists believe there may be as many as twice that number.

In the hustle of city life, it can be easy to forget that we share Chicago with millions of six-legged creatures, but about 90 species of ants are thought to live in the area.

“If humans were to disappear today, the ants would keep on working. But if ants were to disappear, we would miss them,” Boeing said. “They do jobs that most people aren’t aware of — they break down dead plant material so that new plants can grow. Ants are nature’s recyclers.”

Now an entomology researcher at the University of Florida, program director Andrea Lucky launched School of Ants a little more than a year ago as a postdoctoral researcher at North Carolina State University. She was intrigued by the unexplored wildlife in our backyards and thought others would be too.

By conducting an ant census of sorts, scientists hope to learn more about what ants do, what they eat and how they live. In areas where historical ant records exist, they can figure out if one type of ant moved away as a new type moved in.

In its first season, the project collected 80 ant species and attracted so much interest from would-be citizen scientists nationwide that Lucky had to stop sending out ant-collecting kits.

This year Lucky is narrowing the focus to a few major urban areas.

“New York gets a lot of traffic in terms of shipping,” she said. “Chicago came up because it has so much green space and a great climate for ants.”

The collection process also has been simplified. Participants set out part of a cookie on an index card and wait for an hour. Then they scoop the card, the cookie and any ants attached into a plastic bag, freeze it overnight and mail it to the School of Ants Team at North Carolina State University along with information about the collection date, time, location and weather.

The bait must be Keebler Pecan Sandies, which has been the go-to cookie for professional ant collectors for as long as anyone remembers, likely due in part to its combination of ant-attracting sugar, protein and fat.

Lucky estimated that School of Ants has received nearly 100 samples from Chicago so far.

Students of Sean Menke, a biology professor at Lake Forest College, have been setting up ant traps along Metra lines and were surprised to find seven species of ant alone at the Winthrop Harbor stop near the Wisconsin border.

“It’s this neat idea to look at movement of people and movement of ants,” Menke said. “How are ants using this man-made corridor?”

Different ant species operate differently, but in general a colony is made up of a queen and her workers. The workers build and maintain the colony and bring back food, while the queen reproduces, making new workers. A queen can live for as little as a year or as long as a couple of decades. Workers may live for a few months to a few years, depending on the species.