Last week the sites in the region Emmen are revisited. There are large populations of red wood ants at several sites, but at three of the sites wildfires destroyed large heathlands. The fires were caused by an arsonists.

Several nests were in or at the edge of the fire, but because only heatlands were hit the fire was not severe enough to destoy nests. One example is nest Emmerdennen-3, wich was in the fire. But after a short examination it was clear that the ants rebuild the nest. A smaller nest, about 100 meters away, was hit worse. Emmerdennen-6 is a small nest, close to a more severe fire. But the survivibg ants are moving their eggs to a new nestlocation. The fire harmed their nest, but created a much more suitable place three meters away. More severe fire was at the Kampervenen-17 nest. One nest was in the middle of it, but also here there are surviving ants building a new nest. The largest fire was on the Molenveld near Exloo. One nest, MD-8, on the edge is recovered from the fire.

It seems that wildfires on heathlands are not severe enough to destroy complete wood ant populations. The nests seen last week are all recovered, or the ants are building a new nests. These nests go deep underground, probably deep enough to protect the ants against heat and smoke. But what is very interesting is that these ants did also find a way to keep oxigen inside the nest. Did they close the many entrances to the nest before the fire arrived? Two interesing observations were also that wood ants use carbonized materials to rebuild the nest, even while there is fresh matrial available. The other observation is that wildfires also create new opportunities for ants, like Emmerdennen 7. Even when un burned sites are available, the ants chose a brand new location to build their new home.

Beside these wildfire observations there are 145 new photo’s and 185 nest observations added to the database. About 70 new nests were discovered. The updates are available at: Bargeres, Emmerdennen, Emmerschans, Hunzebos, Kampenvenen, Molenveld, Noordbargerbosch, Schuttersbosje and Valtherbos

Ants and birds can have different relations. Wood ants for example are eaten by wood peckers. Other birds do take a ant bath. In Africa live ant trees (arboreal ants) like Crematogaster depressa. These ants live in nests they built in trees. One species of Love birds (Agapornis pularus) digs holes in these ant nests to build a nest. These birds do also use the nests of termites to build their nests. and it seems that the ants or termites do not harm the birds at all. Maybe it is a nice idea to keep an tree-ant colony in our love bird aviary?

Find more about the nesting behavior of love birds.

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

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

Positive effects:

* Fire destroys vegetation so that new forest edges are created. These edges have the best conditions for new nests.

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

Welcome at ant-maps.com. This website shows you how wood ants build
super-colonies of ant-hives. The image at your the right shows a population of
these ants close to Winterswijk in the Netherlands. The nest are connected with
paths or ant-roads. And amazingly the roads do all lead to the two largest nests
in the center of the population. Are these two nests the capitals of this
ant-land? Why are these nests connected to all other nests in this area? Do they
trade goods? Why do wood ants build cities and road structures like we do? Are
they that intelligent? And… do people and the ants follow the same basic
principles for urban planning?

It took two days to get all the information to draw this map. And there were
more questions than answers. To find answers to these questions I decided to
look for more wood ant populations. And the hand- drawn maps from populations
and notes piled up… and up. In February 2008 I decided to grab all this dusty
paper together to put it all on proper digital maps and in a database. This
website is an easy to use web-version of the database. First of all to make all
the data easy to use for myself. But also to show other people how great these
ant-worlds are.

When
you are interested in the ant maps, then first take a look at the largest
site in the database. It counts 320 locations of nests. Most of these nests
disappeared over the last fifteen years. But many new nests were founded by wood
ants too. You can also take a look at the list of sites. On this list you can
click on the name of the site to get a full list of nests in this area with
observations and photo’s. Here
you find information about the mapping methods, the database and this
website.