Who Runs the World? Ants!
It is to be expected that ants with eventually begin crawling on your picnic blanket as you try to enjoy an outdoor lunch on a sunny afternoon in a New England park. Though they seem to exist solely to be nuisances, ants play a fundamental part of our ecological existence and carry a lot of weight in the world, figuratively and literally! If you were to put all the world’s ants on one side of a weighing scale and all other kinds of animals (including humans) on the other, ants would most likely be heavier. Ants are also an incredibly diverse species; in New England alone, there are about 132 different types of ants, which makes myrmecology—the study of ants—a dynamic, ever-changing field of study. But if you’re not looking to acquire a Ph.D. in myrmecology, you can start learning more about ants in A Field Guide to the Ants of New England by Aaron M. Ellison, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Elizabeth J. Farnsworth, and Gary D. Alpert.
While ant-watching may not be as commonplace as bird-watching or people-watching, there are many reasons why it can be just as exciting. Consider that ants are very present in our childhood. Perhaps you remember flicking ants off your shirt as a child, or you have fond memories of the film A Bug’s Life. Or maybe even as an adult it still amazes you that such a tiny creature can carry up to 50 times their own weight on their backs (and in 2010, scientists discovered that an Asian Weaver ant can carry up to 100 times their own weight!) Whatever your story may be, ants have reason to elicit wonder from all of us. And what better way to learn more about them than studying them for yourself?
While A Field Guide to the Ants of New England focuses on a specific geographic region, the book provides a universally-informative introduction about this ubiquitous species. Most of the ant species that we find in New England today recolonized our region after the glaciers receded about 10,000 years ago! But it turns out that the ants that you catch on your kitchen counter or outside are almost always sterile females. Why? Ants organize themselves through a reproductive division of labor where the nonreproductive ants that only live for a year or two create a working class to support the colony’s fertile queen ant who can reign for decades. While it does sound like an absolute monarchy, it is also completely necessary for the survival of the entire colony. Without the guiding chemical control of the queen, the activity and behavior of the workers can become disorganized or random, which leads to the colony’s disintegration.
Ants’ division of labor is just one of the reasons why ants are particularly interesting from a reproductive standpoint. Another aspect is the fact that male ants are only produced when they need to provide sperm for the queen. Queen ants are the breadwinners of the colony, producing eggs for long periods of time. But all of their fertilized eggs are the product of a single mating encounter with a male ant. This means that most of the ants are females; what’s more females share more genes with their sisters than they do with their own daughters!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as the saying goes. But some ants appear to use imitation as a sabotage strategy. Most species mimic similar, but more dangerous species as a defense mechanism. And mimics tend to fall into two categories: Batesian mimcry—where the mimics are harmless and not poisonous— or Müllerian mimicry—the mimics copy and share the same harmful characteristics as their models. There is another type of mimicry, however, that is specific to ant mimics. Not only do the ant mimics physically resemble their models, but the mimics also take on their models’ behaviors and chemical cues, which allows the mimics to infiltrate the models’ colonies and live there in disguise.
These little critters pack a punch of fascinating data and facts that makes studying ants so rewarding. If you’re from New England, this field guide allows you to explore the lives of those who colonize in your backyard. But even if you live far away from the region, this book can teach you about how to observe, catch, and collect ants to say nothing of the colorful, detailed photographs.
To learn more about the A Field Guide to the Ants of New England and the book’s authors, check out their interview with the Boston Globe or listen to the WNPR radio podcast segment dedicated to ants, which features co-author Aaron M. Ellison as a guest speaker.
