Little things mean a lot. Like ants.
They are so much more than pests at a picnic or targets of scorn and poison bait-traps when found skittering across the kitchen counter. Take it from the Lord of the Ants, E.O. Wilson.
A world-renowned, Pulitzer-Prize-winning (twice) Harvard entomologist, Mr. Wilson, 82, literally wrote the book on ants – in fact, many books.
Beginning a chapter, Ants, in his 1994 autobiography, Naturalist, he writes thus:
“They are everywhere, dark and ruddy specks that zigzag across the ground and down holes, milligram-weight inhabitants of an alien civilization who hide their daily rounds from our eyes. For over 50 million years ants have been overwhelmingly dominant insects everywhere on land outside the polar and alpine ice fields. By my estimate, between 1 and 10 million billion individuals are alive at any moment, all of them together weighing, to the nearest order of magnitude, as much as the totality of human beings.”
Specifically a myrmecologist (ant scientist) by initial training, Mr. Wilson has spent most of his life studying ants around the world. He has used them as a springboard to wider scientific pursuits and profound thinking that ranges far beyond the nearest hill or mound.
So with such a weighty endorsement about the wonders of ants, perhaps they are worth a closer look, and a little respect.
Brice Noonan a University of Mississippi biologist following in Mr. Wilson’s footsteps, sums up ants’ importance this way:
“They do so much. They farm fungi and disperse seeds, process soil and work leaf litter, and process it. They break things down and move things around. There are seeds with specific ‘handles’ on them for ants to disperse them, and their movement of soil plays an enormous role in plant community structure and establishment. The role of ants in ecosystem function cannot be overstated.
“They aren’t only something simple we can sample that can serve as a proxy,” he added. “They are a very important component of the ecosystem. If you were to take them out, and leave everything else, the system would not function properly.”
Even casual observation quickly conveys the fact that ants are social, if restless, insects. Witness the classic picnic “ant-line,” or flash-mobs of ants frantically, apparently mindlessly, crawling over discarded food and one another. They belong to the family Formicidae and are related to wasps and bees in the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and quickly diversified with the rise of flowering plants.
Some sources note that only about 12,500 out of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been classified, so there are plenty left to explore for, study, and even name. Readily told by their elbow-like antennae and a slender, distinctive, “Coke-bottle” waists, ants build colonies that range from possibly a few dozen predatory members crowded into small hidey-holes to complex colonies that can cover large territories and consist of millions of individuals.
Larger colonies consist mostly of sterile wingless females forming castes of “workers,” “soldiers,” or other specialized ranks. Most ant colonies also have a few fertile males, or drones, and one or more fertile females, the queens. Mr. Wilson and others sometimes envision a colony as one big organism, or superorganism, inasmuch as its members appear to operate as one, collectively working together to support the whole.
In Naturalist the scientist, noting himself no fan of Karl Marx and his philosophy of human governance, quipped that Marx got the idea right but he picked the wrong species. He should have picked ants.
Susan Jones, an extension entomologist at Ohio State University, noted the ability of termites to survive by “walling off” ant predators. At the same time, she speaks equitably of ants. “Not all ants are pests. They’re very important.” She also seconded the community notion: “All ants are social insects. You never see an ant that can live by itself.
“They very complex insects.” And, they have quite the appetites, said Ms. Jones. “They feed on practically everything – sweets, protein, you name it.”
Generally, Ms. Jones said, colonies are headed by females. Males appear only seasonally, are equipped with wings to fly from a colony, mate with virgin females who become queens, and die. Quite the package. On the other hand, most ants live only 45 to 60 days, tops.
Ants’ homes range the gamut from simple mounds of soil or sand to shoring up the mound with small twigs mixed with dirt as a bulwark against the ravages of rain. Western harvester ants build a deceptively small mound on the surface which disguises a 15-foot vertical tunnel to winter hibernation quarters, well below the frost line.
Ant mounds have many chambers, connected by tunnels, each assigned a use: nursery, food storage, and dormitories for workers. Some ants live in wood like termites and army ants make no home, constantly on the move in large battalions in search of food.
Ohio, lying at the crossroads of prairies to the west, the Appalachian Mountains to the east and south, and vast wetlands and boreal forests to the north, is home to at least 132 species of ants. They include nine nonnative species, six of them exotics, such as the Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) and the ghost ant (Tapinoma melanocephalum), which so far are restricted to conservatories, greenhouses, and other heated buildings, according to some sources. The remaining nonnative species include an eastern Asian species, Nylanderia flavipes, which has established populations in the Cleveland and Toledo areas, where it is widespread in urban woodlots, green spaces, and parks.
All of which is a lot to say, though just a start, about a mere speck of a creature that lives on, or in, virtually everyone’s doorstep.
Contact Steve Pollick at: spollick@theblade.com or 419-724-6068
First Published August 28, 2011, 4:30 a.m.
