If you come to our lab to see our fire ants colonies, you should immediately appreciate the fact that when you get close and breathe on the ants, they suddenly become crazy and try to clump up at the corners. This escape response gave us a way to deliberately facilitate the aggregation in fire ants. We are currently doing experiments in a very thin 2D container to find how they distribute and form clumps in the presence of heat. More exciting results to come!
A passionate fluid & biophysics researcher @ Georgia Tech