Kerry Geiler, a senior at Massapequa High School, has been selected as an Intel Science Talent Search Semifinalist for her research on ant communication.

This year, Science Service, the coordinator of the nationwide competition, received over 1,500 research submissions and selected 300 as semifinalists.

Through meticulous observations of five ant colonies, Geiler followed the ants, identified with colored markings, as they progressed through their daily activities. Setting up artificial scenarios, she established a pattern of communication from individual ants to the entire colony. Using behaviors such as attack, panic, reproduction and feeding, the ants were observed communicating different messages throughout the community. What she discovered, which had been previously unknown, was that for each of these situations the ants released different chemicals which conveyed messages to the other ants in the colony about what was happening.

Geiler has been working on this project for nearly two years, has entered it into several science competitions and has taken her research a step further at each level. She began by studying the physical behaviors of the ants and discovered that the ants had ways of tapping each other for various situations. "I made a table of these, so I've kind of decoded the ant language," said Geiler of her project.

In order to study the chemical communication between the ants, Geiler put the chemicals through a Spectrophotometer and used statistics to compare the graphs between situations. "For each colony I compared the fighting graph against the eating graph against the alarm graph and the graphs were all proven to be statistically different so it showed that there wasn't just one chemical that each colony uses. There wasn't one chemical specific to each colony, each colony had a few different chemicals that they used for communication," explained Geiler.

A member and president of the Massapequa High School Science Research Program, which provides a self-contained research laboratory in the high school for the student researchers, Geiler said she selected her study on ants because she has always liked bugs and in choosing to join the science research program she had to choose a project. She stated that it took her a few days to choose a project but then she decided to focus on ants and took a book out on them. She noted that there were a lot of studies done on the specific chemicals used by one species to communicate but prior to her research there were no known common ways that the ants communicated.

Dr. Paul A. Lichtman, the coordinator of the research program stated, "The entire educational community in Massapequa is so very proud of Kerry." Five members of the science research program at Massapequa High School entered the Intel competition but Geiler was the only one selected as a semifinalist. "I was kind of upset that some of my friends didn't make it but I was also really happy that I made it," said Geiler.

Geiler is also involved in other activities besides science, such as being a black belt in karate, the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, playing the alto saxophone and being on the board of directors of the Long Island Fund for Women and Girls.

The position on the board of The Long Island Fund for Women and Girls stemmed from her science involvement. The organization has a competition every year for young women achievers in science, because it is a field that is often looked upon as being for males, and Geiler was a finalist in their competition. It was after this competition that they asked her to serve on the board of directors.

Geiler has placed in several science competitions for her research. She won first place in the Dowling College Science Symposium, first place in the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair in Zoology, she was named a Bio-"Gene"ious, received a blue ribbon at the New York State Fair for the 4-H Cornell Science Competition and received the plaque for the most outstanding individual project at the fair.

As a semifinalist in the Intel competition, Geiler will receive $1,000 and the same amount will also be given to her school. Finalists in the competition receive $5,000 and then go on to Washington D.C. to compete for first, second and third place.

Whether she wins the competition or not, Geiler says she really enjoyed doing the research and learned quite a bit. "It helped a lot with my other courses in school, like statistics and science," said Geiler. "It helped show how to put them in action and I had to use English skills for writing the paper and making it clear to everyone because a lot of times it's hard to explain what you did scientifically to a lay person."

To others who are interested in doing science research, Geiler's suggestion is, "Definitely take a statistics course because you can say a lot about the results and you can show them in tables and graphs but if you can mathematically prove them it will make them that much stronger."

Geiler believes that her research will ultimately lead to both a greater understanding of another species and provide another alternative in Integrated Pest Management. She will be continuing her research next fall as a biological science major at Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She thinks that one day she would like to expand her research to the medical field.

The 40 finalists of the Intel Science Talent Search will be notified this weekend and they will officially be announced on Monday.