Editor's Note: This piece was originally published online in the UNM BioBlog on March 16, 2018, written by Maria Oroyan. This is part of our project to help connect the Daily Lobo audience to more members of our community.
When a colony of fire ants finds themselves in flooded conditions, they can cling together to form large clumps to survive. In essence, this clump acts like a liquid. This collective, which is called swarm behavior, is one of the many reasons ants are the subject of current research in engineering, advanced technology and robotics. Undergraduate Maria Oroyan discusses applied research swarm behavior and vertebrate immunity at the University of New Mexico in a recent UNM BioBlog.
Maria Oroyan is a senior undergraduate student studying Biology and Chemistry. She can be contacted at mcoroyan@unm.edu.
