More about wild fires

Discussion | Wildfires are an important factor in the distribution of wood ants (Formica rufa group). According to Red wood ants in North America (PDF) did wildfires play an important role in North America. In this region wildfires are a lot more common than in Europe, so this could effect the spread through the continent. (More about this) But wildfires do not only have negative effects.
Negative effects

• Fire destroys nests
• Fire destroys the material used to build nests, but this has only a short term effect
• The fire destroys other insects and plants, the ants food resources.

Positive effects:

• Fire  destroys vegetation so that new forest edges are created. These edges have the best conditions for new nests.
• Fire triggers plant seeds to grow faster. This attracts other insects.

On may 24th 2008 I checked the effect from wildfires to wood ants. I revisited the Maalbeek (Tegelse Heide site) where the fire above took place. I was wondered about the speed nature recovers. But also about the

Formica polyctena I found at open places, created by the fire. There were three small Formica polyctena nests on the east-edge of the forrest. Prooving that wood ants do colonize burned sites after one year.

Photo left: wood ants living in a small hole nest to a burned piece of wood. (Tegelse Heide nest nr. 5)

Other wood ant observations at this place: Nest 6, nest 7 and nest 8

Sources:

• Red wood ants in North America (PDF)
• Wildfire photo’s
• European wood ants and wildfires
• Positive Effects to Wildlife after Wildfire

This picture above shows the same site as the wildfire image above. You can see how fast nature recovered in one year.

Wildfires are not common, but last two years three sites were hit by one. In 2008 a forest near Venlo, in 2009 two sites near Emmen: Emmerddennen and Kampervenen.

How wildfires do effect wood ants is not sure. In North America it seems to be one of the reasons why Formica rufa is not so common as in Europe. But the three fires in the Netherlands do not show negative effects as so far. Damaged nests are rebuilt and the burned places open new opportunities for the ants.

The image below shows an ant on a burned piece of wood. The nest was harmed, but the ants are builing a new nest on another place.

	Nestmaterial is burned, but even burned material is brought to the nest for construction.
	The nest surface and the vegetation around is burned completely. But still, the nest is in a good state after some months.
	Also this nest was burned, but in a more severe fire. The ants… see below
	The ants move eggs from the damaged nest to a new location in an area that was also hit by the fire.

It seems that ants can survive large wildfires. But how about volcanoes? These natural disasters create so much heat and dust that practically all life will be toasted. Or not?

The theory is  controversial, but the German geologist Ulrich Schreiber from the University of Duisburg thinks wood ants can predict volcanic eruptions. He describes in his novel how wood ants predict a devastating volcanic eruption in the German Eifel volcanic field. The ants should identify the carbon dioxide before the eruption and leave their nests. However, the novel was fiction and other scientists did not take it seriously.

When ants can predict an eruption, they can flee. But millions of ants, walking to a saver place, tens of kilometers away? What would happen is an Eifel volcano would erupt? Let’s hope it happens in the early summer when temperature reaches 25 degrees. With this speed the ants would need at least 100 hours to walk to a saver 10 kilometers distance… without time to sleep and eat. But maybe they do not have to walk that far. The eruption of Mount St. Helens learned that ants did survive pretty close to the volcano. The lived underground. Deep enough to survive the pyroclastic cloud.

But go back to the prediction of an volcanic eruption. Schreiber wrote about wood ants. But four days before the eruption Mount Pelée in the Caribbean in 1902 a large swarm of some kind of speckled ants flee into a sugar work, two miles northwest of St. Pierre. Maybe the ants did indeed sense the changes in carbon dioxide. But maybe there is another way ants can feel or sense a coming disaster. Volcano’s are geological events where the earth crust is pushed up by the magma beneath. This does not just happen. Volcanoes create permanent small earthquakes year after year. Seismologists can predict an eruption by measuring these movements. It seems that ants can also feel the increasing number and strength of earthquakes.

Resources

• Ougseurope antmigration
• USGS volcanoes
• Mount Pelée Wikipedia
• Guardian

That depends on the temperature and the weight they carry. The graph shows how fast wood ants can walk with a specific temperature. You can see that between 27 and 31 degrees is the optimal temperature. Then the ants can walk fast and far. At 29 degrees, the optimal temperature, ants can walk 70 meters in 2 minutes.

The red line at 20 degrees shows the temperature that ant-roads are formed over large distances. When it is colder, the wood ants make roads, but not further than 30/ 40 meters. At 20 degrees connections are formed between nest over larger distances like 70 or more. Then 70 meters is a 4 minutes walk.

The blue area is not for sure. Sometimes ants do walk on the nest at 3 or 4 degrees Celsius. But than it is only one ant, walking very slow. The yellow area is also not for sure. But probably the ants all go inside the nest and make air-holes for air-conditioning.

The green area does need extra research. When a nest is fully in the sun and the temperature reaches 28 degrees ants stay inside. At 27 degrees ants come out the nest and stay close to the nest entrance. Only on the sheltered sides of a nest (By vegetation or otherwise) the ants keep walking outside. See an observation at Kampenvenen nest number 5.

The read area at 10 and 11 degrees is the temperature wood ants seems to start sunning. The ants wait for the little sunshine, then all get out of the nest to catch the light. They warm up and take this sunlight energy into the nest.

More world weather at GEOmeteo.eu.

More amazing ant facts

These ant facts are gathered all over the web. They do not have any scientific value, it’s just a summary. But when you are interested… feel free to look up the species here or click the resource links below each fact.

Do ants build levees and dikes?

Fire ants build two centimeters high walls outside the entrance of their nest. Also other ants build these walls, but it is not clear why. Is it because keeping water outside… or are ants just lazy to walk further from the nest with sand?

What is the largest wood-ant hill?

This question is asked often. Ravensheide nest 88 from ant-maps database is pretty large. But there are many observations from others from much larger nests. The largest British one is 167 cm high, smaller than RH 88. On this forum you find a link to a much much larger ant hill! Maybe more than 220 cm. Link to photo

More amazing ant facts

These ant facts are gathered all over the web. They do not have any scientific value, it’s just a summary. But when you are interested… feel free to look up the species here or click the resource links below each fact.

Largest super colony

Linepithema humile, Argentine ants, build a super colony stretching 6,000 kilometers from the Italian, France, Spanish to Northern Portugal coast.  In 2009 scientists discovered that this that this mega colony did not only stretched on Europe, but also the United Stated and Japan. By the way: maybe they should redefine the definition of supercolony…

• Ant supercolony dominates Europe, BBC 2002
• Ant mega-colony takes over world, Matt Walker , BBC 2009

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More amazing ant facts

These ant facts are gathered all over the web. They do not have any scientific value, it’s just a summary. But when you are interested… feel free to look up the species here or click the resource links below each fact.

First ant

One of the oldest known fossil ants  on earth  is the Gerontoformica cretacica. This ant was found in Albanian amber in France and is about 100 millions year old. In 1998 researchers found an ant from 92 million years old in amber on a site in New Jersey. This ant (Brownimecia clavata)  lived when dinosaurs walked around… Interesting is the still living ant species  Martialis heureka. Scientists believe it is directly related to the first ants evolved from wasps, 120 million years ago.

• Une fourmi fossile, Histoires naturelles France
• Primitive New Ants in Cretaceous Amber from Myanmar,  Michael S. Engel, David A. Grimaldi 2005
• Eureka! Heureka! An Astonishing New Ant!, Alex Wild 2008

More amazing ant facts

These ant facts are gathered all over the web. They do not have any scientific value, it’s just a summary. But when you are interested… feel free to look up the species here or click the resource links below each fact.

Jumping ants?

Generally ants can not jump. Put there are some species that can. Champion ant in jumpiung is the Jerdon’s jumping ant (Harpegnathos saltator). With his synchronized legs he can escape from it’s ennemies and hunt other insects. Isn’t it Amazing?  The jump is 2 centimeters high and 10 cm far.

• Wikipedia Harpegnathos saltator

Can ants swim?

No. But there is one species, discovered in the Australian mangroves, that lives in nests under the water surface. (Polyrhachis sokolova) They can swim and navigate under water. Other species, like fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) can survive some time in the water but will die after some days. You can see a photo of an ‘ant raft’ here.

• Scientists discover swimming ants, abc.net.au., 2007
• Red Imported Fire Ants (Solenopsis invicta), Jeff Abrams 2005

Gliding ants

Some ants of the Pseudomyrmecinae and Cephalotini family can glide. It is amazing, but the videos show how these ants can glide and control their direction.

• Research – Gliding Ants – Introduction, Steve Yanoviak, 2005

More amazing ant facts

These ant facts are gathered all over the web. They do not have any scientific value, it’s just a summary. But when you are interested… feel free to look up the species here or click the resource links below each fact.

Largest ant

Giant ant (Formicium giganteum) was 1 to 3 cm long, queens 5,5 cm. but lived 46 million  years ago. The largest living ants  are the driver ants (Dorylinae) (Also called male siafu ant or Safari ants) . The queen can grow to 5 centimeter, but the the reproductive male called sausage fly is also 2,5 cm long. There are quite a few people who think it is the Gi-ant… More

• Antbase.org, dorylinae
• Wikipedia, Dorylus
• World’s Largest Ant, Educateearth, ‘Nova’ 2007

Smallest ant

The  Australian ant Carebara (Oligomyrmex) is 1 mm long, but the minor workers are smaller: 0.75 mm. These ants are at least the smalles ants in Japan. Also Leptanilla revelierii is very small. But not that small.

• Guardian.co.uk Leptanilla revelierii
• There are 262 species of ants in Japan, Gakkens photo encyclopedia
• Myrmicinae Genus: Carebara, Antweb.org, 2009

These ant facts are gathered all over the web. They do not have any scientific value, it’s just a summary. But when you are interested… feel free to look up the species here or click the resource links below each fact.

Deadliest ant (for human)

The real killer-ant is the fire ants. In 1998 a study at fire ant victims learned that from 29,300 victims 83 were killed that year and two almost did. They died after a anaphylactic reaction. Because the fire ant is a growing problem and is also common on other continents the real number of deaths could be much higher!  There is one report of a baby killed by African driver ants Dorylus nigricans.

• Invasivespeciesinfo.gov…rifa, invasivespeciesinfo.gov
• The ants, Volume 514,Bert Hölldobler, Edward O. Wilson
• Medical toxicology, Richard C. Dart
• Survey of fatal anaphylactic reactions to imported fire ant stings, Rhoades RB; Stafford CT; James FK Jr 1989

Fastest bite

Trap-jaw (Odontomachus) ants have the fastest jaws of the world. Not only for ants, but for all known living animals! Amazing, they attack with a speed of 145 miles per hour  or 233 kilometers per hour!

• Powerful jaws could inspire propulsion systems of miniature robots, MSNBC 2006

Most poisonous ant

Ants can attack many ways: bite, sting and spray. Some ants can spray poison 10 cm far. The Bullet ant in South America (Paraponera clavata) sting spreads a venom that is neurotoxic and can disable limbs. Ten stings will kill a men. Also the Fire ant is dangerous.

• Giant tropical bullet ant, Paraponera clavata, Randy C. Morgan

Most destructive ant

There are very destructive ants. Take black carpenter ants (Camponotus pennsylvanicus) , who replace wood by nurseries. They can destroy wooden structures like old buildings. White ants, also called very destructive, are actually not an ant at all: they are termites! Dorylus, the legionary ants, are not that destructive as people say. They do not eat people or trees. They just go for other insects. There is also a legend that a village in ancient times near the Yellow River in China was flooded after ants penetrated the dike. What ant species could be responsible for that disaster is not mentioned.

• Carpenter ants … the invasion of the home snatchers, Bruce Wenning 2006
• The Collapse of a Thousand-Mile Dike Caused by Ants’ Nests Translated by  Guan Ming from zhengjian.org/