The Fire Ant’s Survival Guide to the Disturbed Ecosystem shifts this inquiry into the ecological field, examining how systems of measurement interpret or misinterpret multispecies survival. The project takes the form of a survival manual written from the perspective of a fire ant colony. Fire ants are invasive in the American South and notoriously difficult to manage because they are adapted to thrive in highly variable, disruptive environments.

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By adopting the language of a survival guide and the perspective of the ants themselves, the work challenges traditional land-management approaches, such as those used by the USDA, which often center on eradication. Instead, the work asks what it might mean to consider the worldview of a species that flourishes in the wake of upheaval. It asks how we might recalibrate our sense of ecological belonging—not by restoring some imagined past purity, but by acknowledging an interdependent future.