MOST WORKER ANTS ARE SLACKERS

Ants and bees have reputations as efficient team players. In Temnothorax rugatulus — a small brown ant found in pine forests in North America — division of labor is common, with workers specializing in tasks like foraging, building, and brood care. But new research shows that many ants in a colony seem to specialize in doing nothing at all.

To get a closer look at how these ants filled their time, researchers marked every member of five lab-based colonies with dots of colored paint. Over the course of two weeks, a high-definition camera recorded five-minute segments of the ants in action six times a day, capturing their behavior (or lack thereof). Out of the "workers," 71.9 percent were inactive at least half the time, and 25.1 percent were never seen working. A small fraction of the ants, just 2.6 percent, were always active during observation, the researchers wrote last month in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

Previous studies have postulated that inactivity might be temporary, with ants working in shifts dictated by circadian rhythm. But the new results show that the lazy workers stay lazy no matter the time of day. According to the team, this suggests that inactivity isn’t merely a break between tasks, but might be an important part of the ants’ division of labor. Just what part remains unclear, but one theory is that the inactive ants are either too young or too old to work. Future studies over longer periods of time could capture the ants switching between busy and lazy modes.

MOST COMMON INJURIES

In their September 2015 edition, PCT magazine reported the most common injuries for 2013 in the pest control industry. Here are the results:

• Slips/trips and falls account for about 22% of injuries usually occurring when an employee is walking backwards around a perimeter or get tangled up in their gear or traversing uneven surfaces.

• Auto Accidents account for about 17% – rear-end collisions where employees ran into the back of other vehicle made up about 42% of total auto injuries.

• Sprains and strains made up about 13% of workplace injuries.

• Falling from a higher level made up about 12%, covering situations like technicians falling through ceilings.

• 10% of injuries are categorized as struck by / against. This occurs when a part of the body hits either against something or is hit by a moving or flying object.

• Insect stings and dog bites each constituted about 6%.

• Falls from ladders made up 4%

• The other 10% were categorized as other or miscellaneous.

It is not typical for technicians to be injured by the chemical products they use. Most risk managers equate this to the vast amounts of time and resources spent properly training employees in the use of their materials and use of personal protective equipment.