Return of the forum

19 June 2009 by Richard

After being unavailable since last October following an influx of spam, the antblog forum is now back online!

Register today and join our community.

Robert Svensson photos on Flickr

01 June 2009 by Richard

Some of the best insect photography on the web can be found on Flickr, taken by amateurs and professionals alike. Good examples of this are photos taken by Robert "msitua" Svensson. A friend of AntBlog, many of his photos already feature on the site.

Tags: Photograph

No sex please

28 May 2009 by Richard

Dr Anna Himler and her team from the University of Arizona have found a species of ant who inhabit a "world without sex". There are advantages to life without sex, Dr Himler explained."It avoids the energetic cost of producing males, and doubles the number of reproductive females produced each generation from 50% to 100% of the offspring."

But combining genetic material in sexual reproduction gives future generations many more advantages. "If we're more diverse, we're more resistant to parasites and disease," explained Laurent Keller, an expert in social insects from the University of Lausanne. "In a colony of clones, if one ant is susceptible to a parasite, they will all be susceptible. So if you're asexual, you normally don't last very long. "But in ants we're seeing more and more reports of unusual methods of reproduction," added Professor Keller, who was not involved in this study.

He also points out that social insects, like ants, may be particularly well suited to this type of reproduction because it enables the queen to control the caste and sex of all the offspring in her colony. Dr Himler has been talking in depth to the BBC, read the full story.

Tags: Biology

Texan Fire Ants to be Zombified

24 May 2009 by Richard

Texas may soon experience swarms of zombie fire ants, but that's a good thing, says the LA Times.

The idea is to turn invasive fire ants into addle-brained wanderers is the latest attempt to control the non-native species, which has afflicted the South for half a century and causes an estimated $1 billion in damage in Texas each year.

To combat the pest, Texas agricultural officials have begun releasing a new species of the ant's natural enemy, the South American phorid fly, Pseudacteon obtusus, Texas A&M University said this week.

The phorid flies have never been found to attack native ants, preferring to dine only on their South American hosts. Read the rest of the story over at latimes.com.

Tags: Texas | Solenopsis | Invicta

Ant colonies have "collective mouth and gut"

20 May 2009 by Richard

How do ant colonies manage the nutrients in their food? Audrey Dussutour from the Centre de recherche sur la cognition animale (CNRS/Universite Paul Sabatier) and Steve Simpson from Sydney University have shown that an ant colony functions like a "collective mouth and gut". The members of a colony are capable of dealing with the nutritional needs of their social structure by sharing tasks (foraging, digestion and excretion). The results of this study were published in Current Biology on 12 May 2009.

Tags: Biology

Happy birthday Donisthorpe

17 March 2009 by Richard

Horace Kelly Donisthorpe was born on this day in 1870. Donisthorpe was an eccentric British myrmecologist, widely credited with the discovery of many new species of ant and beetle. He is often considered the greatest figure in British myrmecology.

Donisthorpe we salute you!

Tags: Donisthorpe

A very happy New Year to all!

31 December 2008 by Richard

Hopefuly everyone has a good time seeing in the New Year and all the best for 2009 from all of us!

Merry Christmas!

25 December 2008 by Richard

Merry Christmas to all, from everyone involved in the site!

Alarm bells for Argentine ant UK invasion

17 October 2008 by Richard

The highly aggressive and invasive ant species, Linepithema humile (Argentine ant) is causing concern for ecologists in the UK. The South American ant has already been causing problems throughout the Mediterranean, but due to the changing climate, it now poses a risk to more northernly territories.

Linepithema humile is so successful because this species seldom attacks or competes with sister nests of the same species - unlike most other ants. In their introduced range, their genetic makeup is so uniform that individuals from one nest can enter neighboring nests without being attacked. This goes part way to explaining how and why these ants form supercolonies in their non-native range.

Unlike most native ants, L. humile is considered a pest species and commonly enters homes in search of food and water. The Argentine ant made headlines back in 2004 in Autralia when a single colony was discovered to stretch 62 miles in Melbourne posing a massive risk to local insect species.

Tags: Biology | Linepithema | Humile

Wildlife Trust hopes biodiversity makeover will benifit native ants

16 October 2008 by Richard

Brian Evershamm, the Conservation Director for the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Peterborough Wildlife Trust and his colleague Florent Prunier, spent several days surveying Twywell for ants in 2003, 2004 and 2005. "We were primarily trying to develop the use of small baited traps to monitor ant assemblages, in a way which could be carried out by our Ecology Group volunteers. During the study, we found several colonies of Myrmica schencki in the Whitestones area of the site. At that time, most of the rest of the site did not seem suitable for the species. Indeed, the best 'gullet' (linear ironstone quarry) habitat was densely scrubbed over, and supported just a few colonies of M. ruginodis."

As a result, when the opportunity to fund more management work at Twywell arose, Brian strongly supported the Anthills Project.

The Anthills Project was a biodiversity makeover made possible by a £20,950 grant from The Hanson Environment Fund. The grant was used to remove around three hectares of scrubby bushes and young trees that were taking over the steep gullet area. This revealed the important limestone grassland and allowed specialised flowers, such as bladder campion and wild strawberry, to make a comeback. Contractors tackled the major work while the Trust's dedicated volunteers spent two weeks clearing scrub and sycamore from the gullet as well as keeping the paths clear for visitors.

The clay grasslands at Twywell have many Lasius flavus nests, about 35% of which have Myrmica rubra, M. ruginodis and M. sabuleti nesting on their south-facing slopes. This included not only scrub clearance but also stock fencing to allow grazing.

"I hope that the use of grazing instead of mowing will benefit the range of ant species, as well as the important diversity of plant-feeding insects and molluscs for which Twywell is important."

"Since the initial surveys which showed that parts of Twywell were important for ants, the work on developing ant monitoring transferred to our reserves on the chalk of the north Chilterns in Bedfordshire, where my colleague Ed Turner has worked on ants, as well as much wider elements of biodiversity. Again, we have found small numbers of M. schencki, along with a rich ant fauna which seems to reflect the range of habitat and topography rather well. By using the syrup-baited traps, and pitfall traps, Ed has also managed to find good numbers of Myrmecina graminicola and Stenamma debile (the latter within the dense scrub on the chalk - so confirming that we need to maintain the full range of ecological conditions, and not push everything in the direction of short-cropped flower-rich turf)." Brian went on to say.

Interestingly, he has also found M. schencki on one of their acid heathland sites, at Cooper's Hill in Bedfordshire, where Ed Turner has also carried out some baited-trap trials.

Each year, the Trust runs identification workshops on ants, so that more of their active volunteers can participate in monitoring work in future.

Details of the workshop and the upcoming revisit to Twywell to carry out repeat survey work to follow shortly.

Tags: Myrmica | In the Field | Conservation

1/2 million new trees to regenerate Caledonian Forest

13 October 2008 by Richard

Once covering over 1.5 million hectares of the Scottish Highlands and home to the beaver, wild boar and even lynx (some time ago), the Caledonian Forest is today 1% of its former glory. What remains is an aged and fragmented patch, struggling to regenerate because of overgrazing by livestock.

That was, until August. The conservation charity, Trees for Life, has purchased Dundreggan Estate in Glen Moriston and hundreds of thousands of trees are to be planted over the 10,000 acres in a £1.6m deal.

500,000 native trees are being planted, which will re-connect the forest between Glen Moriston and Glen Affric. This is great news for native ants, and will serve to protect the rapidly declining numbers of wood ants in Scotland.

Tags: Conservation

Leaf cutters workers save their backs - for the greater good

11 October 2008 by Richard

Martin Burd of Monash University, Australia has been talking about how Atta colombica workers take it easy for the good of the colony.

Burd measured the work done by worker ants whose role involves collecting and harvesting leaf fragments. His recently published paper details how a lower level of productivity by foragers improves productivity within the colony.

The ants are capable of carrying up to seven times their body weight, but Burd and co-author Jerome Howard found the ants were carrying about half the maximum load they could manage. Even when the faster delivery time due to the lighter load was taken into account, they were still 35% less productive.

"What looks inefficient is actually efficiency, [it's] pretty clear they were under-performing." Burd said.

Once the leaf fragment is delivered to the colony, its tissue is processed for use to cultivate fungal gardens that provide feed for the colony's larvae. It is then transported by workers to one of the colony's fungal gardens where it is cleaned and dissected into tiny particles that are then implanted in the gardens.

Burd and Howard found the optimal leaf fragment size for peak productivity in the laboratory colonies was about 96 mm square.This was similar to the size of leaf fragments harvested in the field by the ants.

"We have shown that Atta colonies can operate at or near an ergonomic optimum. That is not necessarily apparent when the component tasks are examined in isolation." Burd went onto say.

Tags: Biology