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!"

Comments

Meanwhile, in Argentina

[notfancy]

the little buggers are everywhere. They have a penchant for making nests behind tiles and in utility conduits in buildings, with the effect that all Buenos Aires feels like a huge anthill. I have to put bread, flour and sugar inside Ziploc bags to keep them out. Pest control makes them disappear for a month, and then they return.

The only good thing about the ants is that they keep cokroaches away.

It's no wonder they're so tough

[Anonymous Coward]

The Argentinean ants send all their convict ants to Australia. They are the worst of the worst sociopathic ants and if they start working together, one can only imagine the growth in picnic muggings and 8-armed sugar robberies.

Colony?

[Alomex]

100km long colony of Argentine Ants in Melbourne.

100km long???? That isn't an ant colony, that's the mother ship.

a mere 100km ? How about 6000km ???

[skelley]

A species of Argentine ant introduced into Europe about 80 years ago has developed the largest supercolony ever recorded.
It stretches 6,000 kilometres - from northern Italy, through the south of France to the Atlantic coast of Spain - with billions of related ants occupying millions of nests.

While ants from rival nests normally fight each other to the death, ants from the supercolony have the ability to recognise each other and co-operate - even if they come from nests at opposite ends of the colony's range.

The Argentine species (Linepithema humile) probably came into Europe on imported plants, pushing back the 20 or so indigenous species of European ant.

see here -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1932509.stm

More sources from my personal Web site...

[antdude]

From The Ant Farm's The Reading Room:

• Argentine Ants Invasion: Success Tied to Reduced Genetic Variation
• Supercolony of ants found (Europe; Mirrored articles: #1 and #2)
• Invading Ants Press United Front in California
• Argentine Ants Threaten Californian Horned Lizards
• It's the weather
• Giant mutant ant colony found in Australia (similar story.
• Might not be 'supercolony' after all: #1 and #2.