While many of us try and keep ants out of our properties, one Queensland scientist has been doing everything he can to entice them out of hiding in his backyard.
Queensland Museum senior curator of insects Chris Burwell started a survey at the museum prior to the lockdown but, instead of halting his research, he moved it to his backyard.
"Before lockdown I found 14 ant species on Level 5 of the Museum, looking at what we had on our doorstep," Dr Burwell said.
"I shifted my operations to home, checking out what was in my back garden using the same techniques I was using at work, which included spending an hour looking for ants in plants or on the ground foraging for food."
Dr Burwell used small squares of cardboard covered in peanut butter, strawberry jam and other condiments, which he called "afternoon treats" to lure ants out of hiding.
"You may think you have no ants in your backyard then you put that out and I guarantee you'll have a whole heap of ants turning up," he said.
"Ants are called mass recruiters. One little worker walks around and finds a stash of food and then goes back to his nest and gets his mates involved."
While restrictions were in place, Dr Burwell discovered more than 60 species in his inner-west Brisbane suburb of Chapel Hill.
"Some days I was wandering around at night-time and then looking in leaf litter to find more different species in different areas," he said.
"People are amazed that there is that diversity in the middle of the suburbs."
A snapshot of insects in a moment of time
Dr Burwood said his study was not just a personal exercise with his backyard specimens to now be preserved, mounted and placed in the Queensland Museum.
"It was an exercise for me to test that I can identify different species of ants and I got an A+ on that, which is reassuring," he said
"I didn't just look at live ones, I collected specimens and this collection will display the ants found during the lockdown in my backyard."
His discoveries included two unexpected species that Dr Burwell had not seen before.
"We had a Iridomyrmex mayri, and I didn't expect those as they are usually found in bushland not in backyards."
Dr Burwell said the museum's Discovery Centre had seen an upsurge of enquiries and photographs from people wanting to know what insects they had found during their time at home.
"It's been a bumper year for insects with rain earlier in the year producing huge outbreaks of butterflies and months," he said.
"South-east Queensland is a mixed zone and is pretty exceptional due to the climate and we have many different species."
