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Researchers Find 3,600-mile Ant Supercolony
darnellmc writes "Usually ants from different colonies fight till the death, but according to this article one group of ants from different queens work together. Resulting in the largest ant supercolony yet discovered. This supercolony reaches from the Italian Riviera along the coastline to northwest Spain. Probably not an the ideal location for a cookout considering this new find. This is the kind of think that used to be science fiction."
it is not unusual for ants of different queens to work together. in fact, there are many species of ants that do this.
probably the most notable in the US is the dreaded "fire ant."
A giant ant colony is cool, but I want giant radioactive *ants*.
...if the billions of ants started to cooperate together on, say, block of humans, killing them all?
........yea.......
...released on DVD? That and 'Them' are the great ant movies with Phase IV sounding a little too like this current story for comfort.
-- SIGFPE
Here in Austin TX, and in most of the South, we've got fire ants which were imported in plants from South America in the 1920's. That's the same exact story given in the article about how the ants arrived in Europe. Are these the same species? If so, then somebody should check out our ants here. I bet we have more square miles of fire ants than the europeans. I bet we even have more square kilometers too. :-) Americans always have to have the biggest and the noisiest of everything, so why not the biggest ant colony?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
This is not even close to as cool as the Superant colony found last year...
And to think, just a few months ago all those analysts said the residents of Europe were too fractured for the Euro to work! It's good to see everyone getting along!
Now, how was that calculated? Benoit Mandelbrot would sniff LOUDLY about the length of a coastline!
The idea (which I will no doubt crudely butcher) was that of a "meta" consciousness existing in the system which individual ants operated as members of, much as individual brain cells.
Makes me wonder - if such "ant colony" sentience could exist, might this not be one heck of a complex (and as a result possibly more intelligent) example of one?
Then again, it/they still don't seem to be making any overtures toward chatting with the primates, heh... Perhaps just still preparing for the surprise attack...
I don't know how the hell they got to the Italian Riviera, but I'm glad someone found my ant farm.
I'M COMIN' GUYS!!!
It's all going according to
i knew it was getting popular. but a coastline? bravo.
four-oh-four
A further investigation found the remains of a brutal scene, where James Whitmore appears to have been killed why trying to exterminate the creatures, but he had succeeded only in killing Dave Foley, Julia-Louis Dreyfuss, and Woody Allen.
At least some good has come from this tragedy...
There's nothing you have that they can't take away: Absolute zero, Gentle Jack, bottom line.
Here in Toronto, which I believe is close to the northern limit for finding termites, they have adapted to form super-colonies too. IIRC they have
adapted so the queens need never fly away.
Its about these same ants & thier domination in cerain areasin the US. In argentina there is twice the genetic diversity as in California, probably same ratio to this supercolony too. This species apparently has developed the ability to take advantage of whats called a genetic bottle neck; something that to most species is detrimental.
It seems thier so succesfull they are killing off local ant species 10 times thier size, which is in turn killing off lizards and such that feed on those ants. Evolutions a bitch, eh?
here's a picture of the ants pattern of spread so far across the US
--
What is the sound of this sentence?
get boiling!!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
While worker ants are produced at quite a rate, the generation time from one queen to the next is longer than many insects, most likely of order once a year, so there may well have been less than 100 generations for the populations to diverge genetically since they arrived.
What might be interesting in view of the recently reduced gene pools in many species of larger animals is to see how such a large population of near(?) clones handles whatever challenges the coming years might throw at them.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
I've always thought it would be cool if an alien emissary landed on the White House lawn, then with all the TV cameras rolling and the president and dignitaries standing there in grave anticipation, it bent down and started talking to the ants. :)
Who's the dominant life form now?
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
I know importation of one species to
combat another species has had quite
a checkered past, BUT I wonder, if these
ants are nicer than the Fire Ants,
would it be better to import them
and have their supercolony battle the
fire ant supercolony. Hell we could
even help the process along a little.
Fire ant bites sting like fire because the "unbeatables" (S. invicta) spit acid into the bite, and then the bite always develops into a pustule because the ant also spits bacteria, and they take months to go away. How to prevent this (other than not going outside at all in Texas):
When you get ant-bit, immediately rub bleach on the spot. Straight bleach, Clorox or the like. Reason: neutralizes the acid, kills the bacteria. Or so I have been told. Disclaimer: I am no kind of medical professional at all. Also, those bites can kill you if you have an allergic reaction beyond the normal. More than you want to know, with pictures you don't want to see, cached at Google.
It's going to take a big can of Raid(tm) to find out!
P.S. (for those who don't know what Raid is, it is an insect repellent - and I'm referring to an ad campaign of theirs. Now, nobody can complain about me not catering to the non-North Americans. Of course, it kind of takes the fun out of the whole posting when I have to explain the whole thing to the damned foreigners! Oops... Did I say that out loud?)
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Though not about this specific colony, there is a beautiful E.O. Wilson book entitled The Ants. Though a bit pricey, it straddles the levels both the academia and the general the public. Definitive and readable...
She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.
Jean-Paul Sartre
hoorah, hoorah, the ants go marching...
.
.
.
and they all go marching on! (it's late)
-Mitch Hedberg
-------- -praktike
...here's the BBC's take on the matter. It's always good to have multiple views on these things.
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts