FIELDS OF DREAMS // The volunteers: GETTING DOWN TO EARTH // Studying ants is a great vacation

DATE                  09/25/94
NEWSPAPER             THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION               NEWS
EDITION               MORNING
PAGE                  L07
STORY LENGTH          9 INCHES
HEADLINE              FIELDS OF DREAMS // The volunteers: GETTING DOWN TO 
                         EARTH // Studying ants is a great vacation
BYLINE/CREDIT         DAN FROOMKIN:The Orange County Register
SUBJECT TERMS         OC:COLLEGES:STUDENTS:VOLUNTEERS:RESEARCH:CENTRAL 
                         AMERICA:INSECTS:AGRICULTURE:LAND:ENVIRONMENT
 .
  Joanna Dojillo's mother sometimes has trouble figuring out her
  daughter.
     "She's going, `You went all the way over there to look at ants?' "
     But to Dojillo, 23, a senior biology major at the University of
  California, Irvine, a summer in Costa Rica studying leaf-cutter
  ants is a great vacation.
     "I just find them extremely fascinating," she says. "This is the
  type of work I want to do."
     Dojillo's project is to track down the voracious leaf cutters,
  tempt them with a variety of yummies and see what they like best --
  and least.
     Carrying a notebook, tape measure and machete, and wearing
  army-surplus pants, a T-shirt and an inside-out Knott's Berry Farm
  fisherman's hat, Dojillo sets up shop on a ragged pasture down the
  hill from Lynn Carpenter's house.
     Then she and longtime boyfriend Bob Mooney stare with rapt
  attention as an 80-yard-long line of ants snakes its way through
  the grass to and from a giant nest.
     Just about every ant, on its return trip, carries a tremendous
  piece of leaf on its back, like a huge green sail fluttering in the
  wind.
     "It's like me carrying all you guys back to the house," Mooney
  says.
     "On a log!" Dojillo adds.
     The leaf cutters are a formidable pest for the region's farmers,
  who generally pour poison into their nests. But Dojillo wonders if
  there is a natural solution.
     Are there leaves that the ants hate so much that their presence
  will keep the ants away? Are there any so tasty that the ants won't
  bother anything else?
     The preliminary findings aren't exactly good news for Carpenter.
  "They sure do like all of Lynn's plants," Dojillo says.