A
story of ants. Ants are the
most abundant of insects, the most effective predators of other
insects, and the busiest scavengers of small dead animals. They
transport the seeds of thousands of plant species, and they turn and
enrich more soil than earthworms. In totality (they number roughly
in the million billions and weight about as much as all of
humanity), they are among the key players of Earth’s terrestrial
environment. Of equal general interest, they have attained their
dominion by means of the most advanced social organization known
among animals.
In
the early 1960's, one of the vexing mys- teries of evolution was the
origin of ants. The oldest known ants, found in fossil deposits up
to 57 million years old, were already advanced anatomically, quite
similar to the modern forms all about us. And just as today, these
ancient ants were among the most diverse and abundant of insects.
Then, one Sunday morning in 1967 at Cliffwood Beach, New Jersey, two
beautifully pre- served ants were found in amber about 90 million
years of age, from the middle of the Cretaceous period, Mesozoic era
in the Age of Dinosaurs. They were more primitive then all other
known ants, living and fossil; they possessed most of the
intermediate traits that connect modern ants to the nonsocial wasps.
As a result of the discovery, other entomologists intensified their
search, and many more ant fossils of Mesozoic age were found in
Canada, Siberia, and Brazil. They compose a mix of primitive and
more advanced species and they have illuminated the history of ants
from near the point of origin over 100 million years ago to the
start of the great radiative spread that created the modern fauna.
Based
upon The story of two ants by Edward O. Wilson, in The
best American science and nature writing 2001. |
The
ants of Grabov Rat: when they discovered the abundance of
datura seeds, about 40 meters from their underground facilities,
highly organized, they collected the seeds in half a day. An army of
marching ants was bringing the seeds to the entrance (actually, a
crack in our driveway) while other specialists were loading the
seeds underground. The piling up of the seeds was probably due to
the relatively small entrance. An hour after this photo was taken,
not a single seed remained.
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