I began by molding a series of plaster-of-Paris boxes with cavities the size of those that wild colonies occupy in nature. I added a larger adjacent cavity where the ants could hunt for prey. Into many such cavities I placed live mites, springtails, insect larvae, and a wide variety of other invertebrates I found around the nests of dacetines in natural habitats. I was later to label this the “cafeteria method.”
