Brigit, finally Ph.D candidate

So I finally took my candidacy exam yesterday, and passed. [YAY!] The whole process has been the most nerve-wracking experiences in my life. I had a ridiculously high stress response. I had to reschedule once due to dehydration/high-blood pressure/sleep deprivation/exhaustion.

After one of the worse experiences with college emergency medical care, I reopened my stomach (that was shrunken and spastic), re-hydrated myself, gave up caffeine, and slept over the next 48 hours. I returned to the doctor (who's this awesome lady) and talked about my extreme fight or flight response to the A exam. We decided to go with beta-blockers, since they reduce the social anxiety experienced in performance situations, and won't make me sleepy/fuzzy as opioid anxiolytics would.

I do have an anxiety disorder - along with a hereditary depressive disorder- but I self-regulate my treatment along with my psych. nurse, and I had kept panic attacks at bay for years. But this exam changed everything. This was even knowing I chose an excellent committee, full of pretty hard-core people in my fields (pharmacology and biophysics) that are all genuinely dedicated professors, and just very good people all around. And maybe that was part of it, since under-performing (as I anyways feel I did, because of the nerves fucking with my memory) was one of my worst nightmares.

After they told me I passed they gave me the very constructive and accurate criticism of my proposal and performance, and told me I did a good job. By the time I packed the stuff with the help of the hubs (who went out of his lab to give me support while they deliberated) my body was just begging to cry.

And although I used beta-blockers my body found a way to tell me it was freaking out. I have a contraceptive implant - I have "periods" very, very rarely now [yay]. Guess who came down for a visit the moment I went out of the exam? Yup, bitch aunt Flo.

Ant Wars- continued.

In grade school one of my favorite things to do was watch the black and red ants wage war in the playground. Later, I thought the coolest organisms on earth were the fungus and parasites that hijack ant brains. I wish they'd make a movie with human-targeting variants of them. Guaranteed bio-gore!
Now check this out. Further proof of the awesomeness of ants. You know that ants take prisoners of wars as slaves and force them to take care of the larvae. Well the slaves can become rebellious motherfuckers:

Achenbach and Foitzik collected 88 colonies of the slave-making P.americanus ant that had abducted workers from three species of Temnothorax. They found that the workers clearly care for the larvae, and nearly all of them were raised until their pupated. But at that point, the slaves' behaviour changed dramatically, taking on a more homicidal bent.

Two-thirds of pupae died before they hatched. The mortality rate was even higher (83%) for pupae containing queens, but very low (3%) for those containing males. The duo saw that the captives were deliberately killing the healthy pupae. In about 30% of cases, as in the photo, the workers would gang up to literally pull the developing ants apart. Another 53% of the pupae were killed by neglect, by workers who moved them out of the nest chamber.

These murders were solely the acts of the slaves. No P.americanus worker ever lifted a mandible against its own pupae. Nor are the deaths a reflection of a generally poor standard of care on the part of Temnothorax. In their own colonies, the majority of pupae hatched, with just 3-10% dying before that happened.

This rebellion takes its toll on the slave-makers and may explain why the nests of P.americanus tend to be very small. The captives may never reproduce themselves, but they do their part for their relatives back home by crippling the workforce of the slave-makers. These indirect benefits are particularly pertinent to Temnothorax ants because a single colony can occupy many different nests - a family of sisters spread out over a large area. If one nest is raided, it pays to ensure that none of the related nests are targeted later.