Latest Myrmicinae Stories
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...
It turns out ants, like humans, are true farmers. The difference is that ants are farming fungus. Entomologists Ted Schultz and Seán Brady at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have published a paper in the March 24 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, providing new insight into the agricultural abilities of ants and how these abilities have evolved throughout time. Using DNA sequencing, the scientists were able to construct an...
Far from being a model of social cooperation, the ant world is riddled with cheating and corruption "“ and it goes all the way to the top, according to scientists from the Universities of Leeds and Copenhagen.Ants have always been thought to work together for the benefit of the colony rather than for individual gain. But Dr Bill Hughes from Leeds' Faculty of Biological Sciences has found evidence to shatter this illusion.With Professor Jacobus Boomsma from the University of Copenhagen, he's...
LUBBOCK, Texas -- Imported red fire ants have plagued farmers, ranchers and others for decades. Now the reviled pests are facing a bug of their own.Researchers have pinpointed a naturally occurring virus that kills the ants, which arrived in the U.S. in the 1930s and now cause $6 billion in damage annually nationwide, including about $1.2 billion in Texas.The virus caught the attention of U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers in Florida in 2002. The agency is now seeking commercial...
Latest Myrmicinae Reference Libraries
The ants, one of the most successful groups of insects, are of particular interest because they form advanced colonies, and can constitute up to 15 percent of the total animal biomass of a tropical rainforest. They belong to the order Hymenoptera and are close relatives of the vespoid wasps. Ants appear in amber, found in central New Jersey, believed to be from the Cretaceous period. It is thought that they evolved from the wasps that had appeared during the Jurassic period. They are...
Leafcutter ants are found in warmer regions of Central and South America. These remarkable social insects have evolved an advanced agricultural system. They feed on a specialized fungus that grows only in the underground chambers of the ants' nest. The ants actively cultivate their fungus, feeding it with freshly-cut vegetation and maintaining it free from pests and weeds. This is done by a symbiotic relationship with a colony of bacteria that grows on the ants that protect the fungus. The...
Fire ants are stinging ants of the genus Solenopsis, of which there are 266 species. They include Solenopsis invicta, commonly known as Red imported fire ant (RIFA). Each colony produces large mounds in open areas, and feeds on young plants and seeds. Solenopsis often attacks young animals and can kill them. For humans it has a painful sting - hence the name fire ant - and the aftereffects of the sting are deadly to some individuals. The worker ants are blackish to reddish and vary from...
