Ant Mega-Colony Covers the World 359
Deag writes "A mega colony of one family of ants has spread all over the world. Previous mega colonies in California, Europe and Japan have been shown to be in fact one global colony.
Ants from the smaller super-colonies were always aggressive to one another. So ants from the west coast of Japan fought their rivals from Kobe, while ants from the European super-colony didn't get on with those from the Iberian colony.
But whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends."
Genetic drift (Score:5, Interesting)
How much variation in the cuticle hydrocarbons is acceptable? Are there specific 'marker' hydrocarbons that help differentiate between colonies? Genetically, is it a matter of different intron expression, or is it variation within a single intron? How many base pairs are involved if that's the case?
Damn, I knew I shouldn't have coffee this late.
Well, I'm off to plunder the depths of the internet in hopes of learning more about ant colony differentiation. Adieu!
I've done battle with them and retreated... (Score:5, Interesting)
I had these ants in my old house. Seal up one path and they find another. Put a pesticide on the baseboards and they run across the ceiling. The liquid ant bait/poison kills them, but they keep coming. I used a whole lot of the stuff and there was a 1/4" layer of dead ants in the room and they kept coming. It turns out that the anthills are all connected and they will even add a local hill if they find something that seems like a good source of food.
I finally sold the house.... Sucker!!
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Interesting)
There's one that always works for me: boiling water, a whole pot, straight down the hole
If you pour molten aluminum down the hole you can get rid of the ants and get a keen casting of the whole nest. You could keep it as a trophy like a stuffed moose head.
Re:don't tread on an ant ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure why people make the complaint that some scientific research (like this) is a waste of time.
I know some scientists who are very human focused. They research something, say cancer, because they really want to help some of the victims they know. If they aren't focused on particularly immediate human scale problems, still they try to watch for ways whatever they are doing can contribute to human happiness or sheer survival. I know others who are mostly value neutral. To one of them, you could talk about breakthroughs in cloning, and he'd ask if they had any uses for fruit-fly studies and if it didn't, he really wouldn't care one way or another. That's pretty much distanced from a 'normal human focus', but the worst thing this guy could possibly do to anyone would be to maybe convince congress to spend a little too much on fruit-fly research. Why is this a big deal in evaluating a scientist?
I mean, I know some businessmen who give away extra shoes to needy children. I know a lot more who are focused on the bottom line. Almost never do I hear the ones who are focused on their own profits accused of wasting their lives or the time or money of everyone else. Some people may accuse them of greed, but not of being out of touch with human concerns. For lots of professions, having a focus on the bigger picture, thinking about the long term consequences of what you are doing is totally optional, and nobody expects to hear a phrase such as 'for the good of the whole human race'. Nobody criticizes a lawyer for focusing on inter-business contract law instead of becoming a crusading DA and putting more criminals away. Nobody really argues that cosmetic surgeons are evil for not doing heart surgery instead. It's just something in the way they think about science.
I know some politicians who, when they first heard about cloning, jumped to the idea of building clone armies to conquer the world thirty seconds later. I have never met a biologist who thought that way. If some people slam any scientist who isn't focused on local, immediate, human issues, why do those same people so seldom worry about some politicians who sound like movie cliche mad scientists?
I usually argue that research such as this example will probably feed back into the whole institution that is science, and benefit humanity in the long run anyway. I still think that's true, but let's assume I'm totally wrong on that point, and it and things like it will totally waste 0.0002% of the world's budgets, and accomplish nothing of significant interest to the bulk of humanity, ever. That makes it about like model trains. Who goes around bemoaning the vast, inhumane waste that is model train hobbydom?
Re:don't tread on an ant ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm guessing the reason they didn't mutate to their environment is that their spread across the globe was assisted by humans accidentally, and thus happened much faster than their evolution would allow. They've only been that widespread fairly recently, in the grand scheme of things (like in the past few hundred years), like humans of any particular widespread ethnicity, they can recognize each other as being similar.
Now, if the different supercolonies across the globe manage to all get along and work together, the ants are ahead of us for sure.
Re:don't tread on an ant ... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not so surprising though - it just means that the ants have been able to spread faster than their rate of evolution/mutation. Otherwise, they would have differentiated/speciated first. But because it's so easy for them to hitch rides on passing people, cars, boats, and airplanes, they've spread a lot faster than they would naturally have been able to.
The more interesting thing will be to observe over time and see how long it takes before their super-colony collapses or is torn apart by civil war. Of course that's not likely to occur until their paths of transport and communication are disrupted. If we don't destroy ourselves first, thus giving them a long time to continue to evolve in total connectedness, I guess things will get interesting for them down the road...
The other interesting point this raises is about language and communication in general - biologists frequently talk about animals communicating with each other via whatever their particular mechanisms may be, but they seem to assume that all the members of a species are homogeneous in their communication methods. That's a pretty naive assumption, given all the different vocal and non-vocal mechanisms various human tribes use to communicate. The interesting question here will be whether this super-colony is an example of genocide (the total annihilation of different/competing ant species) or assimilation...
Re:Obligatory (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Genetic drift (Score:1, Interesting)
(B)ing (I)s (N)ot (G)oogle...
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Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you tried concrete?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQERRbU23bU [youtube.com]
Re:don't tread on an ant ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Obligatory quote (Score:5, Interesting)
You'll think I'm kidding, but I'm not: chalk a thick blue line across your dooropening. Ants don't like blue, it's something with their sensory system, and they are very hesitant to cross a blue area.
Re:Obligatory quote (Score:5, Interesting)
There was an Arthur C Clarke short story entitled "Retreat from Earth" which involved a hostile Alien being discovering that a giant termite colony was being controlled by an alien machine in the core of the Earth dedicated to safeguarding humanity, and in the end, single handedly repels the invasion.
Perhaps Arthur C Clarke was almost right, except it's Ants, not Termites :)
Re:Obligatory quote (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think it's the blue (but I don't know that), however it's definitely the chalk. Find an ant on a white wall, and get a nice thick chalk line around him. Just regular old white chalk. But the heavier and thicker the better. Anyway, the ant is trapped. He'll play the roll of the pong ball for a while and then drop to the floor, only to climb back up your wall.
Isn't it nice (Score:2, Interesting)
When I clicked on this article, I was 99.9% sure that the first comment would welcome ants overlords...
Re:don't tread on an ant ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't it also possible that this is an example of convergent evolution? What if the family of chemicals these ants use to identify each other just happens to be the 'most efficient' one? What if it takes just a little bit less energy to produce it and it spreads just a little bit farther than chemicals that other ant families use? Isn't it at least possible that these ants aren't related to each other at all?