Ants used to creep me out. But over the last few months, I and several other QUEST producers have definitely become ant-lovers. The study of ants is called “myrmecology” so perhaps we could be considered “myrmecophiles”. Whatever it’s called, we can’t get enough of them. Ever since a story meeting with the California Academy of Sciences in November 2009 when they told us about their “amazing” ant researcher, Brian Fisher and the work he’s doing locally as well as in Madagascar with ants, we’ve been smitten with the Family Formicidae.
Since that Cal Academy meeting, QUEST has created six distinct ant-related pieces of content. Lauren Sommer decided to do a radio report right away. I distinctly remember the excitement on her face when she came back from her first meeting with Brian Fisher. She stopped at my desk and said, “…you guys HAVE to do this story! The ants are SO AMAZING!” She especially liked their “little faces”. I have to admit, up to that point, I hadn’t really thought of ants as having faces. You need only check out Ant Web to see that not only do they have faces and hairdos, the world’s ant species have incredible morphological diversity.
Lauren produced a great radio report, “Bay Area Ant Invasion” about the invasive Argentine Ant “super-colony” in California that has pushed out most of the native ant species here. She also published a slide show along with her Producer’s Notes about “Coping with Ants at Home”.
And just in time for the broadcast of my TV story, “Ants: The Invisible Majority”, Lauren’s made a beautiful map that features some of the top Bay Area ant researchers’ favorite native ants and personal notes about why they love them.
During the production of my TV story, we contacted the world’s foremost expert on ants, E.O. Wilson, on the off chance that he might be in the Bay Area during the time when we were shooting. To our delight, his answer was ‘yes’ and although we were not ultimately able to time it for inclusion in the QUEST segment, I was able to shoot an produce an interview segment with him for the KQED TV series, This Week in Northern California, in which he talks with me about his lifelong fascination with ants, his new novel, “Anthill” and what we can all do to save the natural world.