I'm preparing some new ant foods, and I really need your help testing them.
What's different about these foods?
The new foods come in a ready-to-use, shelf-stable format. More specifically, they are packaged in a pipette, where the user simply snips the tip, squirts some gel out of the pipette, and stores the remaining food in the refrigerator.
The new format allows for a wider variety of ingredients and processing methods to be used, and eliminates user error for preparing the food.
Who qualifies to test these foods?
Testers must reside in the US or Canada, and have access to 10 or more captive and/or wild ant colonies. No special knowledge is required to be a tester, since the results are easily observed.
What do I expect from testers?
The main test observations I'm looking for are receptivity—feeding response.
If you choose to participate, you will be supplied a number of foods. You will feed a small amount to all of your colonies, and observe the response. Ants may either inspect, taste, be repelled by, feed from, or recruit to the food source, or a combination of the above.
You will be required to record your observations using a 1-page form/survey for each colony observed. Each record should only take a few seconds. Recording the results for a dozen colonies should only take 5-10 minutes each day. There is very little effort involved, but recording the results using the web form is absolutely required.
You may also use wild colonies as test subjects.
Testers must be diligent to report observations on the day of feeding, and to test the foods without delay. Because it is simple to record whether ants eat the food, I expect the duration of the study to last 10-14 days from the date you receive the foods.
Users who fail to report results as required may be unable to participate in future studies.
What can I expect?
Many of the foods may show poor receptivity. That is, ants may not eat them. Ultimately, the results of one user may differ from the results of another user, and the final judge will be the composite totals from the recorded observations of all users. The foods you receive should not be construed to be a final retail product, and so a high degree of failure is expected from these blind trials.
So how do I sign up?
Please express your desire to participate by sending a private message to me here on Formiculture, or by replying in this thread. Shipping and materials are absolutely free.
Be advised I can only take a limited number of participants, and those who have access to more colonies and/or have greater experience keeping ants will take precedent over other users.
Edited by drtrmiller, March 15 2015 - 6:05 PM.
