Ants are generally highly territorial. Any two ant colonies even a few metres away from each-other will usually war until one is exterminated, or until the end of time.
Except in this case.
The Argentine ants, now found pretty much everywhere except the Antarctic, now have what is functionally a mega-colony, with members from opposite sides of the globe treating each-other as if they were fellows within the same colony.
“[I]t now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.”
That would seem to make them the single, largest population on Earth.
It’s unclear as to why the ants behave this way. It could be because of a dearth of genetic diversity among this species of ants. If so, that makes the population potentially very fragile. Any illness that affects one ant would affect them all, equally.
This sort of lack of genetic diversity leading to large-scale near-extinction has already happened, to one of the previously-most-common varieties of banana, the Gros Michel, though other varieties of banana could suffer a similar fate.
We started with ants, and ended up with bananas. Didn’t expect that, now, did you?
No related posts.
I would be made quite happy if they actually had good genetic variation and still cooperated with each other across the globe
If that was indeedy the case, we would have a lot to learn from the Argentine Ants.
Maybe not.
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/8716
crap
at least it helps to show that when people don’t fight each other they all prosper much more…
@TigroSpottystripes Katsu: True, that.
OK, I took another read of the Beeb article, and I’ve decided that it’s not in contradiction with the UCSD article I posted a link for.
The mega-colony referred to does not consist of ALL Argentine ants, but rather it is made up of certain supercolonies in different locations. Supercolonies in California, southern Europe, and Japan are part of it, but other supercolonies are not.
I wonder what the situation is in South America, where I would expect much more genetic diversity?