Fire Ants Breaking Law of Physics [part 2]

Researchers took a raft structure made of thousands of ants (like one seen in the wild floating down the river) and dropped them into liquid nitrogen. The liquid nitrogen froze every ant, their position, and the overall structure exactly in their place. However, while it froze the ants themselves, it also froze the tiny air bubbles located inside the structure, between the ants themselves. Using an electron microscope, researchers took the raft apart ant by ant. By doing this, they said "We were surprised at just how waterproof raft was -- its ability to repel water and keep afloat" (Gammon). Does anyone else think this experiment was quite clever. I was wondering how you would be able to examine a ant raft without disturbing them. Liquid nitrogen makes sense at it would literally freeze them within a second (or less), keeping in tact the structure itself. It was interesting to note that researchers noted that by adding soap to water the raft was in, would reduce the surface tension and would sink the raft. This is no surprise at it also works if you put a paper clip in water (which will float on the water tension), but with added soap there is much less water tension (the paper clip sinks). Also, apparently the queen can sometimes be found on the raft as well. When the queen is located on the raft, a tighter ball of ants surrounds her, protecting her. It amazes me the waterproof ability of these ants. They are able to make the structure float and be completely waterproof.

Source: Gammon, Katharine. "Fire Ants Assemble as a 'Super-Organism.'" Inside Science News Service. Fox News. 25 April 2011. Web. 26 April 2011.

Picture source: Rifdhan. Fire Ants. 27 Apr. 2011. Picture. Flickr. Web. 13 May. 2011.

Fire Ants breaking law of physics? [PART 1]

Have you ever wondered how ants can float in water? Many have observed ants (whether on t.v. or real life) ants connecting together to make a raft of some kind, with hundreds of other ants collecting on top. With the entire raft made of ants, and its passengers made of ants, do you ever think about how they do this? Ants outer bodies (exoskeletons) are naturally hydrophobic, or repel water. A single ant can float across the top of the water because of the surface water tension and the ants ability to trap air bubbles near its body. These air bubbles are hard to see, usually located underneath the body. However researchers began to look at those ants that link up together, during a floor for example. How do these ants still float when the physics says their combined body weight should make them sink? Looking at floating fire ants in South America, researches found that when fire ants link up (grabbing each others legs with a force 400 times their body) they are somehow able to collect tiny air bubbles between their mandibles (front legs). Although their combined weight should make them sink, the added air bubbles allow them to float, like a giant raft. You may think "well what about the ants on the bottom, wouldn't they drown?" No, it turns out that those on the bottom stay on the surface of the water and when they do get submerged, the ants flex their grip in unison, causing the bottom ants to return to the surface to breath. In the next part of this post, I will explain how the researches experimented with how the ants did this (it is pretty interesting). I mean, how would you observe a raft full of thousands of ants floating down a river?

Source: Gammon, Katharine. "Fire Ants Assemble as a 'Super-Organism.'" Inside Science News Service. Fox News. 25 April 2011. Web. 26 April 2011.

Attraction of electricity?

It has been found that fire ants are known to be "attracted" to electricity. Why would anyone or anything be attracted to electricity? These little creatures have been known in different parts of the country and world to invade different electrical units. These units include traffic lights, household electrical meters, circuit boxes, and other outside electrical units. They will gather in the hundreds over these electrical areas, causing area damage to power lines and units. It has been studied by the Texas A&M University have found that it is the actual electrical fields that the ants are drawn to. Many, including me, would have thought that maybe it would be caused by some magnetic field but they have ruled that this theory. When the ants come in contact with the electricity, it usually does not kill them. In fact, they will abandon there search for food and water for days just to feed there craving for electrical fields. This can cause many of them to starve to death. While the researchers have figured what exactly the ants are attracted to they still have no idea why. What could possible make a ant ignore all survival signals (hunger, thirst, scents to do work) simply to "play around" with some electricity? Perhaps they get some kind of stimulant from it, like a drug. What is deadly to us may be stimulating to them. No matter what the reason is, we know fire ants will continue to invade our electrical devices, causing damage, just to feed their attraction.

Source: Weiss, Rick. "Ants get a transformation charge-why ants invade outdoor electrical equipment." Science Service, Inc. BNET. 1989. Web. 25 April 2011.

Communication is wild

We have known for a long time how ant communication works, for the most part. First, ants can communicate via touch, smell, and even vibrations (sound). However, most ants use chemical communication or pheromones. These chemicals are released from the rear end of the abdomen. These chemicals can have different meaning, depending on the species. Some tell each other of a food source, while others indicate danger. They also use these chemicals to decipher between each other. This decipher can be a signal of what cast a particular ant is in a particular colony. For example, a queen ant gives off a special scent, or chemical, to indicate to the other workers that she is the queen. Also, it helps eliminate other species of ants from wondering into the colony, because the guard ants will immediately notice this ant has a different scent. In the first video, an experiment is done showing how ants will lay a sporadic trail of pheromones until they find a food source. That single ant will then consume as much of the ant source as possible to take back to give to the other ants as evidence almost. On the return journey, the ant no longer will lay a sporadic trail but a continuous one, much more solid and more easy to follow. Also, the strength of the chemical refers to its importance. The more important the issue is, the stronger the chemical. If there is a big threat to the colony, ants will release a strong chemical compound to signal the danger, and that the danger is extreme. This can be related to humans as well for a example. In gas there is a chemical that smells like rotten eggs, to tell people when their gas is running without being burnt. If someone smells a light odor of this chemical "rotten egg" smell, they know they must have recently forgot to turn off the gas (not that big of a deal). However, if you walk into your house and the gas smell is extremely strong, you know you have real potential problem (explosion). In the NOVA video, I want to try that experiment of taking a fire ant and creating a chemical trail on a piece of paper, thus "communicating with the ants." Any ideas on how ants keep track of all these different odors. I mean I would imagine its like being in a room full of people talking at the same time. You can not really understand whats being said unless you focus on one person. Maybe ants are also overwhelmed by every ant laying scents that they only focus on the strongest ones, the important ones.



Source:

Gibson, Roberta. "Questions About Ant Pheromones." Wild About Ants. Wordpress. Jun 27, 2010. Web. April 17, 2011.

Derbyshire, David. "Getting it off their chest: Study reveals how ants talk to each other." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers. Feb 7, 2009. Web. 17 April 2011.

Video Source: "NOVA | Lord of the Ants | The Ant Whisperer | PBS." 19 May 2008. Youtube. Web. 18 April 2011.

"How Ants Communicate With Each Other?" 5 Feb 2009. Youtube. Web. 18 April 2011.

Ants act as population police.

Driver ants, I have found, will invade many other social nests including termites, wasps, bees, and even other ant species. They do these raids in a very organized manner. They will usually only attack those nests that are the most safe, and in which they have the most success. For instance, Coptotermes formosanus is a termite species that has a special gland on its head that is uses as a chemical defense. Driver ants have learned of this special defensive mechanism and will usually not attack that termite species, instead attacking less defensive ones. Also, by attacking in a organized, overwhelming manner, wasps and other nesting animals have no defense against a large number of driver ants. Wasps will typically sit back and watch as their nest and young get taken away. There are numerous videos that show driver ants, and other ant species, being very good population controllers. They will help ensure that no other species gets to large, by attacking that nest and reducing there numbers. Different ant species can help keep different populations under check. For instance, leaf cutting ants can keep certain vegetation under control while others can keep the insect population in general under control. Any ideas of what keeps the ants under control? Of the information I have found, other ants will attack other ants at times (only certain species), and disease can destroy an entire any colony in a matter of days. Fugal infections and bacterial infections can spread through a ant colony like wild fire since that are usually in close proximity to each other. This makes me bring up a good point for all this think about. When your at your home and you want to prevent ants from entering your home, people should use a repellant chemical, not a toxic one. In other words, instead of using a chemical that will the ants on contact, perhaps placing a barrier chemical barrier around the house that will not kill the ants but simply force them to turn around. Because although you may want them out of your house, you also want other insects out of your house, and ants can help control that outside. So perhaps think about what you are buying next time you go to buy a ant killer...

Source:

Siemens, Kip. "Ant Behavior." Entomology. Colorado State University. 1995. Web. April 17, 2011.

Video Source: "Defending the ant nest from intruders." Mar 12, 2010. Youtube. Web. Apr 17, 2011.

Army Ants (Driver Ants)

[Video Above is a must see!]
Army ants are one of the most fascinating ant groups of them all. There are well over 200 known species in this group of ants, all sharing similar characteristics. First, one noticeable difference from other ants is that they do not construct a permanent nest. Most either build a temporary nest out of materials or build a nest made entirely of ants themselves (hanging ball almost). Once settled into their new area, they will hunt the surrounding around until all food sources are exhausted. Found mostly in tropical and subtropical regions, including Africa and South America, and have a very interesting feeding style. Unlike other ants that forage (wondering usually individually to find food), Army ants go out in pack (or gang) like raids. These raids can include thousands of ants at once, swarming the forest floor, capturing anything that comes in their path. Most have a sting that will immobilize their catch. Their main weapon, however, is shear numbers. They overwhelm the creatures by numbers, ensuring almost nothing escapes. There prey is not limited to small creatures. They will attempt to attack anything that comes in their path including humans. Their large jaws allow for cutting up everything from insects, reptiles, birds, small mammals, and even crabs. I look forward to putting more information on Army ants up here in the near future. Quick question for everyone to think about. Are their any ecological benefits that these "destructive" ants could provide. Any benefits to humans? Farmers? While their destructive capabilities are clearly evident, there ecological benefit is just as important.

Source: "Army ant." New World Encyclopedia. 2 Apr 2008.

Source Video: Natural World Ant Attack 1/5. 06 Oct. 2009. Youtube. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.

Superorganism [Part 2]

In the second part of the article, the researchers panted individual ants different colors and evaluated what jobs they were performing. From my understanding, the ants of the smaller colonies were performing many different tasks individually. However, the researchers observed a pattern. As the ant colonies grew in size, individual ants began to specialize in specific jobs instead of performing multiple jobs. This specialized division of labor was only seen in the larger colonies. For instance, in a smaller colony, a single ant may have four or five jobs (brooding, foraging, tunnel repair, etc.), but as the ants colony numbers increased, they began to divide up the labor more so that a single ant only performed one job instead of five. This would make sense. A colony with only 20 ants will have to give each worker a variety of tasks to ensure the colony survives. However, a colony of 1000 ants can have 50 doing one job, 50 doing another, etc. This shows efficiency within the colony. This even relates back to the first post about this article in the reduction of energy per ant as the colony grew. If a single ant has only one thing to worry about, instead of 5, it can use less energy. Take yourself for example. If you work at a small company and have to copy papers, run a class session, pick up lunch, go to a meeting, and run a seminar, you have to invest a lot of energy that day. But if you work at a big corporation and your job is simply to answer a phone for the day, your energy use is greatly reduced, because that company hires more people to specialize in a given task. We use this same energy reduction to be more efficient. You may even look at this at a cellular level. As an organism gets more complex, cells start to divide work up more to have tissues specialize to do specific jobs. It seems its true that nature works in patterns. Any thought on this?

Source: Walters. S James. "Superorganisms Are More Than The Sum of Their Parts."Live Science. Tech Media Network. 03 Jan. 2011. Web. 05 April. 2011.
Source Picture: Tina. Ants all In it. 05 May. 2008. Photo. Woodstock, Indianapolis. Web. 05 Apr. 2011.

A Superorganism? [Part 1]

There was an article that I found that was extremely interesting to me, and hopefully to everyone else.  The article is titled "Superorganisms are more than the sum of their parts," and is posted my Life Science, and is written by James S. Waters from the Arizona State University. This was published January 03, 2011, which makes it a very recent research article in reference to ants as superorganisms.  A group of graduate students at Arizona State University wanted to answer a simple question: How does the size of a superorganism affect its physiology and organization, if at all?  This question was broad in asking about bacterial communities and even human cities.  However, the researches decided to help answer the question by working with ants, a social insect that are excellent to study for organization and the division of labor.  Focusing on the California seed-harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex californicus).  First, researchers collected queen ants from the wild and brought them back to a lab and get them to start a new colony. The queen will, over a few months, lay eggs that will become adult workers.  This lab colony can generate up to thousands of ants in a few years time.  After getting a fully functional ant colony in a lab, researchers started an experiment that questioned whether ant colonies would become MORE efficient as the colony grew in size.  The research team used a respirometry device that measures how much oxygen a certain size colony was consuming in special chambers.  They then used that device to measure larger colonies and how much oxygen they were consuming.   They found that, as common sense would conclude, larger colonies used more oxygen then smaller colonies.  However, as a ant colony expanded and grew in numbers, less energy was consumed per ant.  Even more interesting, "When groups of ants were taken out of their colonies, however, they all required the same relative amount of energy." Any ideas as to why this would be?  This is a superorganism colony that as it grows in size, is consuming less energy per ant than smaller colonies.  What regulates this?  

INTRODUCTION INTO ANTS!

Ants are some of the most advanced and powerful group of animals that live on this planet.  They are classified as belonging to the phylum Arthropoda.  Except in Antarctica and some small islands, ants have managed to expand to almost every part of the globe. There are people who classify these creatures as "super-organisms" because the thousands of ants in a colony work in unison, collectively working to ensure the colonies survival as a whole.  Ants end up, on average, being 15-20 percent of a environments terrestrial biomass.  In tropical regions, where they thrive more, ants end up being over 25 percent of the terrestrial biomass.  Those figures are amazing in that ants, being so small, account for so much of the biomass in most terrestrial areas.  Perhaps it is because humans rarely see ants as a whole, except for the occasional ant infestation of a persons house, that no one thinks of ants making up so much of the environment.  Then when you think about it, look at the ants in a home, sometimes their are tens, hundreds, or even thousands in a single house.  Now take that number and imagine how many their are just in one square mile.  One state?  A single country?  They truly do rule, at least in part, this natural world.    But what makes them so successful?  Why are they able to expand in such numbers to almost every part of the globe?  It could very well be a combination of multiple factors.  They are superb social creatures,  can alter there environment relatively well, have the ability to utilize many resources, and have excellent defense mechanisms.  And where they lack as a species individually, due to their size, they gain collectively as a whole.  Their strength in numbers perhaps has enabled them to stretch globally.  Final thought, although humans rule this world now, ants are sure to still be around long after we are gone.