Latest Myrmicinae Stories

Fungus-farming ants have cultivated the same fungal crops for 50 million years. Each young ant queen carries a bit of fungus garden with her when she flies away to mate and establish a new nest. Short breaks in the ants' relationship with the fungus during nest establishment may contribute to the stability of this long-term mutualism, according to a study at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Gamboa, Panama."We were struck by the paradox that even though the ants transfer a...

The prestigious Smithsonian Museum has been overrun with insects.A brand new exhibit, "Farmers, Warriors, Builders: The Hidden Life of Ants," debuts Saturday at the National Museum of Natural History and is open through Oct. 10.The display will include a living leaf-cutter ant colony from Ted Schultz, the museum's curator of ants.Also on display is a 6-foot-tall cast of an ant colony collected by Walter Tschinkel, a student of ant-nest architecture at Florida State University.There...

British scientists fitted rock ants with tiny radio-frequency ID tags to determine the process by which ants select a new home. University of Bristol researcher Elva Robinson and colleagues gave the ants the choice of a nearby poor nest or a good nest located farther away. The researchers found the colonies selected the superior site although it was nine times farther away than the alternative. And, the scientists said, the best nest was chosen despite the fact that very few individual ants...

Ant trails fascinate children and scientists alike. With so many ants traveling in both directions, meeting and contacting one another, carrying their loads and giving the impression that they have a sense of urgency and duty, they pose the following question: how do they organize themselves? A new study published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE may have some answers.Pedro Leite Ribeiro and his colleagues at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, believe they have found...

A study found that ants exhibit competitive, destructive behavior within worker ant colonies when one of their own tries to reproduce. This behavior is only displayed when there is a queen in the colony.Experts found worker ants typically give up reproducing to care for the queen's offspring, who are also their brothers and sisters.However, a US-German team of researchers found that chemicals produced by the sneaky ants gave away their fertility status.The findings are published in the...

One of the most important developments in human civilization was the practice of sustainable agriculture. But we were not the first - ants have been doing it for over 50 million years. Just as farming helped humans become a dominant species, it has also helped leaf-cutter ants become dominant herbivores, and one of the most successful social insects in nature. According to an article in the November issue of Microbiology Today, leaf-cutter ants have developed a system to try and keep their...

By Nicolai, Nancy Smeins, Fred E; Cook, Jerry L ABSTRACT. - Vegetation composition is often dictated by grazing intensity in semiarid savannas; recovery following drought may depend on pre drought species composition. Nests of the red harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex barbatus, affect the dynamics, composition and recovery of post drought communities due to their larger size, greater seed production and higher perennial grass richness. We hypothesized that vegetation at ant nests would survive...

Researchers trying to determine whether nature or nurture determines an ant's status in the colony have found a surprising answer. Both.Nature (that is, the ant's genetic makeup) and nurture (what it eats, for example) play a role in determining the fate of the Florida harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius, a resilient creature found in many parts of the southeastern United States.The research team included scientists from the University of Illinois, the University of Arizona, Linfield College...

You won't be able to hear them. Don't even try. But somewhere out there, maybe as near as your backyard, the crazy Rasberry ants are marching. Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of them are coming in a near-unstoppable zig-zagging insect army intent on making your home, yard and life a living hill. First spotted in 2002 in Pasadena by Tom Rasberry, the exterminator for whom the rice-grain-sized insects are named, the ants now have spread through much of the greater Houston area....

New study shows the age of victims determines how fire ants respond to aggressorsPretending to be dead is an effective self-defense strategy adopted by young fire ant workers under attack from neighboring colonies. This tactic makes them four times more likely to survive aggression than older workers who fight back. As a result, these young workers are able to contribute to brood care and colony growth to ensure the survival and fitness of their queen. These findings by Dr. Deby Cassill from...