Ant Identification Workshop by Dr Laurel Hansen
Dr Laurel Hansen is renowned for her studies of carpenter ants and has been providing ant identification labs for decades. This year a number of Cascade’s staff attended. We sent both field personnel and office staff to ensure they are well equipped to help clients with various ant infestations. Being able to determine which type of ant is present is critical to providing the best advice and ant treatment strategies.
Dr Hansen’s lab involves studying a number of specific attributes of ants, focusing on details of features such as their antennae, hairs on specific body parts, nodes and more.
Although some ants such as carpenter ants are relatively large, other ants such as odorous house ants or pharaoh ants are very tiny. In all case microscopes are used for the attendees to locate various features that aid in their identification.
Photo above: Attendees use high powered microscopes and “keys” (printed diagrams and descriptions) to determine the species of various ant samples.
Ant specie identification is done with “keys,” written pictorials that categorize ants according to various body shapes and smaller features such as the number of antennae parts, specific hairs or special features like spines. In the end, Dr Laurel’s workshop students can “key out” various ant species that are found in the Pacific Northwest.
Photo: Example of ant specimen under microscope showing antennae detail, shape of thorax, etc. Hairs can be seen on the abdomen.
Cascade rotates our staff through these ant workshops to ensure our personnel can best help our customers with various ant infestations. It is only by properly identifying the ants that we can then best advise our clients and formulate a proper integrated pest management (IPM) approach for their control.
Cascade Pest Control provides ant inspections and ant control for a diversity of pest ant species including odorous house ants (aka ‘sugar ants’), carpenter ants of various species, fire ants, harvester ants, moisture ants, pharaoh ants, and more.
