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Super Ant Colony in Australia

JamesD_UK writes "Elissa Suhr of the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University has discovered a 100km long colony of Argentine Ants in Melbourne. With a reduced genetic pool compared to ants native to south America, the Melbourne ants have put aside their differences and formed a super colony. The Argentine Ant poses a threat to native ants who are unable to compete, affecting animals further up the food chain (such as the coast horned lizard in South California). With the average size of an Argentine Ant at 3mm, you could fit 30 million insect overlords along the length of this colony!"

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  1. Mush larger one in Europe: 3,600 miles by ZiggyM · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I read this story last year, which talks about a super colony of Argentine ants spanning 3,600 miles through europe. A little exerpt from the article:

    Swiss, French and Danish scientists believe they have found the largest cooperative unit of ants ever recorded. The colony is 3,600 miles long, stretching from the Italian Riviera to northwest Spain. It consists of billions of Argentine ants living in millions of nests that cooperate with each other. Some ant colonies can achieve a cooperative effort which allows them to work as one single unit, and in essence, one being. Ants from different nests normally fight. However, researchers assume the ants in the super colony are so genetically linked that they recognize each other, despite the fact that they are from different nests with different queens.