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."

Comments

3600 miles along the coastline??

[Barryo_Stereo]

Now, how was that calculated? Benoit Mandelbrot would sniff LOUDLY about the length of a coastline!

*Phew*

[polyphemus-blinder]

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!!!

Termites form super-colonies too

[geoswan]

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.

Big problem in California, Louisiana, FL too

[Merik]

I found this article(from about 2yrs ago)

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

Single immigrant queens

[ynotds]

From the article:

That's because in such a giant colony many workers are unrelated to the queens they help to raise.

I thought it was already well understood, let alone obvious, that these super colonies are the result of a single immigrant nest/queen colonising virgin territory.

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.