From: Corina Tamita To: Jeffrey Epstein <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2012 12:38:14 +0000 well it stinks in the cities but in the savannah, there's the sweetest smell of red soils, black soils, fresh grass and occasional animal dung. On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 8:34 AM, Jeffrey Epstein <[email protected]> wrote: kenya On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 8:31 AM, Corina Tamita < wrote: what smells? On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 7:28 AM, Jeffrey Epstein [email protected]> wrote: ive never been but always wanted to go.. what about the smells? On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 4:04 AM, Corina Tamita < > wrote: i'm studying relationships between ants and trees -- ants defend trees against herbivores; trees provide food and shelter for the ants. and there's a very interesting ant that in certain parts of kenya is a good mutualist and in other parts is parasitic (sterilizes the tree and prevents it from reproduction). i made a model to show that can happen when the system is invaded by another ant species which is agressive and dominant -- so the presence of a third species can lead to a switch in the behavior of an existing one, from mutualist to parasite. the reason it sterilizes is because then the tree diverts the energy resources otherwise used for reproduction into making more food and shelter for the ants. this way the ant colony gets larger and stronger and has a much better chance against takeovers by the invader. now that trees are budding and flowering we're going to different regions where the invasive ant is present, absent, or present but not yet spread all over the system, and measure how that affects the behavior of the other ant species. thus far it's quite promising -- the hypothesis seems to be supported and the model turns out to be predictive of the amount of sterilization observed in the different regions. have you ever been to kenya? I'm falling in love with the place.. On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Jeffrey Epstein lee