The Collective Mind of African Giant Ants

[labelwench]

This video pertains to the reproduction of these ants, and an interesting aspect of the relationship between the ant queen and the role of the rest of the colony in the mate selection of her consort.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHoRi...eature=related

[labelwench]

This video shows an excavated abandoned colony that was constructed by leaf-cutter ants.

Concrete was poured from the surface, and after it had set, the site was excavated so that the design could be studied. Absolutely amazing......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQERR...eature=related

[labelwench]

This taken from an article on the communication systems of ants and other social instincts. Not my own words, but an interesting read. LW

Language is essential to effective government among social creatures. Without means of communication of some sort, it would be impossible for societies to hold together and to act together in those communal movements which are alike the evidence and the end of social organizations.

Thus we infer that some way of making known the common will and aim must exist among such insects as ants, bees, wasps, and termites that maintain permanent sodalities. And so we find it in ant communes. Thus is preserved unity and efficiency, by holding the citizens together; by disseminating purposes and influences important to civic success; and by securing at once mobility of action and the concentrated force of the republic, for peaceful service, for common defence, and for aggressive enterprise.

Men commonly think of language as a vocal medium for conveying thought and emotion from one individual to others. As thus defined, insects are dumb, for they have no true voice nor organs of speech such as belong to "articulate speaking men." They also lack the means of uttering such cries as characterize birds and brutes. But if we take language as simply an understandable medium for expressing emotions, insects are thus endowed. By certain movements of the body and of parts of the body, especially the wings, antennae, and jaws, and by sounds made by various organs in sundry ways, they convey to one another the primitive and simple emotions of their kind and of all animate beings. In taking up the subject as it bears upon ants, we shall best reach such conclusions as seem at present attainable by considering it in relation to insects in general.

The language of insects may be regarded as mimetic, when emotions are expressed by gestures or acts; pteratic, when by wing vibrations; spiracular, when made known by sounds issuing from the breathing tubes or spiracles; stridulatory, when conveyed by the friction of one organ against another; and antennal, when the antennae, or "feelers," are the media of communication.

Insects express emotion mimetically - that is, by bodily gestures. Mimetic language, though more limited in its ability to convey ideas, is not less intelligible than vocal speech. Indeed, a glance of the eye, a movement of the hand, a shrug of the shoulder, a stamp of the foot, a toss of the head, may betray in man the true thought or feeling within him, even when spoken language is used to conceal it. How apt a medium mimetic language may become for expressing clearly a wide range of ideas one may see among the inmates of institutions for the deaf and dumb. We may find, perhaps, that this medium serves insects no less effectively for communication within that limited range - of ideas, shall we say? - to which their faculties are confined.

Let us stand before this oak-tree and watch a double stream of mound-making ants thronging up and passing down the well-marked trail that leads to a herd of aphides upon some oak-tree branches. The motion of a finger near the trunk attracts the attention of a sentinel, one of a number that seem to be guarding the flanks of the column. It halts, thrusts out its antennae, and shows signs of excitement. As an experiment, the finger is moved slowly within an inch or more of the ant. Its antennae wave rapidly. Its head and body jerk with eager intentness. It stretches forth its head, and reaches out its fore legs, with jaws eagerly agape and antennae quivering. The whole attitude and every bodily detail clearly express to the observer the idea of vigilance, of suspicion, of a challenge, of a purpose to repel.

As plainly as if it had spoken, the sentinel has said: "I suspect you! I test you! I bid you begone!" We onlookers understand this. Is it supposable that the ants themselves do not understand? From the tree-path we turn to the conical mound whence these ants are issuing. It stands silent in the shadow of the tall surrounding trees, its quietude broken only by the movements of a few worker-ants, who are lazily dumping pellets of soil from one of the few upper ports. At the base of the cone, where most of the gates are located, the column stretches across the grove to the aphis-covered oak. Give the mound a sharp blow with foot or hand. What a change! Instantly the whole community is aroused. From every gate pours forth a surging torrent of irate sentinels, followed by other inmates, until, in an incredibly brief time, the mound is covered with angry insects. They run to and fro, their bodies a-quiver as they go. They challenge one another with crossed antennae.

They peer at every unusual object in their way. They startle, and stand rampant at the vibration of every sharp sound. The surface fairly buzzes with the excited creaturelings, their whole mien and attitude saying, unmistakably: " Our home has been attacked! We are in danger! Rally to the defence! Death to our enemies!".

http://www.antcolonies.net/howantscommunicate.html

[labelwench]

Another interesting article. Ants are monogamous in most cases. Few are breeders, most are sterile workers, and the colony has a high percentage of shared genetics as a result. LW

September 29, 2009
For the Faithful, Eusociality
by Elizabeth Pennisi

As social as humans are, their cooperative nature pales in comparison to that of ants, bees, wasps, and termites (see hill, left). Colonies of these insects can number in the millions and function seamlessly as “superorganisms.” In their book, The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies, Burt Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson point out that this way of life makes for very successful living. These insects represent a mere 2% of the insect species yet take up two-thirds of the insect biomass. In tropical rainforests, ants outweigh all the mammals and land vertebrates combined.

Yet the scores of entomologists and evolutionary biologists who have marveled at the efficiency of superorganisms have yet to sort out for sure how superorganisms evolved. True superorganisms are highly eusocial: Typically, one or a few queens lay all the eggs, which are tended to by nonreproductive workers. Their fecundity can be astonishing: In their more than 10-year life span, queens of Atta ants (see right) can produce 150 million daughters, for example. Multiple generations live together; and because workers are sterile, very few conflicts arise, and the colony runs quite efficiently.

Less extreme versions of this lifestyle exist, leading some to suggest that eusociality evolved in stages, starting with a female that set up communal nests with other females, with some forgoing reproduction to help provision and protect the young. A few have suggested that it’s not even that critical that the founding females be all that closely related.

In my Origins essay on cooperation, I did not touch upon the origin of these truly social insects. But Jacobus Boomsma of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, has thought extensively about this question and rejects the stepwise progression from cooperative breeding to eusociality, asserting that not just close kinship but also lifetime monogamy is critical to incipient eusociality. Early eusocial species “have a very special form of strict monogamy that has been unappreciated,” he says. This idea has been suggested before, but “Boomsma has performed a valuable service in reviving it and extending it,” says Andrew Bourke of the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom.

Termites mate for life, with a single queen and “king” producing generations of siblings, all equally related to one another. Once in their lifetime, wasps, bees, and ants leave the nest on a mating frenzy, with the queens returning with enough sperm to last the rest of their reproductive years. The consequence of having just one mate for life is that the many generations of offspring are all siblings that on average share half their genes. That number of genes in common is the same as they would have in common with their own offspring should they try to reproduce. Thus, if there is even a small survival advantage to group living, that advantage would be a strong enough selective force to encourage the evolution of sterile castes and true eusociality, Boomsma argues. “When a parent refrains from mating with any additional mates, their offspring are free to stop mating at all,” he explains. However, strict monogamy is rare, particularly over evolutionary time scales, and thus, so is eusociality.

In the late 1950s, Kansas University entomologist Charles Michener suggested that eusociality could arise in one of two ways. By the subsocial route, parents associated with offspring; by the parasocial or semisocial route, females joined forces with their peers in communal settings. Yet even today, that latter scenario lacks any hard evidence, says Boomsma. Such cooperative breeding setups never lead to permanently sterile helper castes; there are too many conflicts of interest. Those conflicts disappear where queens have a brief mating interval and then settle down for a life of reproduction using the sperm acquired during that one fling.

A 2008 phylogenetic analysis of mating systems in ants, bees, wasps, and termites supports Boomsma’s hypothesis. In 2008, William Hughes of the University of Leeds, U.K., and his colleagues looked deep into the past of 267 eusocial bees, wasps, and ants. They found ancestors of these lineages of eusocial insects were monogamous. Only later, once sterile castes had evolved, have some groups begun to mate more than once they reported.

To hear more about Boomsma’s hypothesis, listen to a talk he gave earlier this year at the Evolution of Society meeting sponsored by the Royal Society.

[labelwench]

Throughout the tropics, ants and Acacia trees live together in intricate interdependent relationships that have long fascinated scientists.

Now researchers are reporting that in Africa, this plant-insect teamwork depends on the very antagonist it is intended to ward off: Africa's big browsing mammals.

Scientists have observed mutualism, or cooperative interactions between different species, throughout the natural world. The phenomenon is also well-known among plants and insects, with some of the earliest observations surrounding ants and plants in Central America.

What sets the Science paper apart is that it shows how easily these relationships, which likely have evolved over many millennia, can fall apart once a critical cog is removed.

Acacias are mostly shrubby trees common across the tropics and sub-Saharan African savannah. They have swollen thorns that serve as nests for three species of biting ants. Healthy trees have hundreds of the thorns, often containing more than 100,000 ants per tree. Both the ants and the trees benefit from their close cohabitation. The ants get the thorny shelters, as well as nectar they collect from the bases of Acacia leaves. Because the ants swarm in defense against anything that molests the trees, the trees get protection from their chief ostensible nemeses, browsing animals.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0110144845.htm

[austintorn@aol.com]

Graybeard descended from that tree.


(He's off building a house on a mountain. He bought the mountain.)

[Graybeard]

“We are not created for any grander purpose than the ants that are there or the flies that are hovering around us or the mosquitoes that are sucking our blood.”

CLICK


cool bananas ... greg

[labelwench]

“We are not created for any grander purpose than the ants that are there or the flies that are hovering around us or the mosquitoes that are sucking our blood.”

CLICK


cool bananas ... greg

Excellent article, Greg. Thank you for posting it.

The following from a link on the same page. Very interesting insects are ants, and the size of their colonies and the architecture and venting etc. should be food for thought for humankind. We are incredibly arrogant creatures, often doing more harm than good to the ecosystem during our brief individual tenure. LW

An Amazonian ant has dispensed with sex and developed into an all-female species, researchers have found.

The ants reproduce via cloning - the queen ants copy themselves to produce genetically identical daughters.

This species - the first ever to be shown to reproduce entirely without sex - cultivates a garden of fungus, which also reproduces asexually.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7998931.stm

[labelwench]

A question comes to mind, and as one who studies ants, perhaps you can answer and save me the research, as I must soon retire for shift ahead.

Are ants a species that is capable of interbreeding?

It will be interesting also to see if this change toward asexual reproduction is determined to be a proactive or reactive move on the part of the ants.

Any thoughts on the above?

Thanks,

Lorrina

[Graybeard]

A question comes to mind, and as one who studies ants, perhaps you can answer and save me the research, as I must soon retire for shift ahead.

Are ants a species that is capable of interbreeding?

Ants have a Queen ?? Like bees ?? not sure what you mean ??

It will be interesting also to see if this change toward asexual reproduction is determined to be a proactive or reactive move on the part of the ants.

Any thoughts on the above?

Thanks,
Lorrina

It could be a reactive .... because they are 'cementing' their DNA ..... they will be unable to diversify or adapt because there will eventually be no variation in the DNA pool.

It could be a reaction to pressure, a last ditch effort.

For example, White Pointer Sharks (females) are starting to give birth without mating with males .... because males are scarce ... this is a good solution ... but could be the last step before extinction ....

Because the offspring will have identical DNA to the mother ... and they're offspring ... the same .... but if the mother was in trouble the children will face the same problem ... and with the disadvantage of no diversity within they're DNA to be able to respond.

What I am trying to say here, very badly, is that the link you provided may be revealing a species under enormous pressure, I can see no real advantage, long term, in this adaptation ...

Just my thoughts ... greg