The Timulla Contigua Ant - by Eliza D.

Today at the Field Station while walking up the dirt path from the garage to the lab Sarah noticed an interesting red ant with black and white stripes on its abdomen. Molly and I wanted to know what type of ant the ant was. Lenny thought the ant was a Velvet Ant because of its distinct markings; Sarah disagreed. We all wanted to know what type of ant it was so we trapped the ant in a vile and brought it to the lab. Then Sarah focused a microscope on the trapped ant and handed us a book on New England ants. She showed us how to use the book to identify our mystery ant. Molly and I looked for a long time but we never found out what type of ant it was. We decided to try using the new computer at the field station and used Google Crome. After changing our key words a couple times we finally found an ant identical to our ant! The name of the ant was Timulla Contigua and it was in the the same family as Velvet Ants. Lenny wasn't that far off in guessing what type of ant it was. We took the name back to the ant book and searched for it. Sarah even helped us search but still none of us could find it. We looked through the whole glossary and even flipped through the book. We realized the ant wasn't in the book; that's why we couldn't find it. Sarah told us she would contact the writer of the book to let him know he missed an interesting ant in his book. I hope I find another interesting ant soon.