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Curious Cat Science and Egineering blog full tag cloud
Blind “Ant From Mars” Found in Amazon
The pale, eyeless ant appears to be adapted to living underground, possibly surfacing at night to forage. Its long mandibles suggest that the 0.08-inch-long (2-millimeter-long) animal is a predator, most likely of soft-bodied creatures such as termite larvae.
Christian Rabeling, a graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin, found a single specimen of the new species, thought to be a worker ant, in tropical soils near Manaus, Brazil. Rabeling’s team named the new creature Martialis heureka—”Martialis” means “of Mars
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The new species’ genes suggest that it broke away from the main ant family before the origin of all other living ant groups, which include 20 subfamilies that together contain more than 12,000 species.
Related: New Ant Species Discovered in the Amazon Likely Represents Oldest Living Lineage of Ants - Swimming Ants - Symbiotic relationship between ants and bacteria
Very cool webcast. The ant nest covers 538 square feet and travels 26 feet into the earth. The nest is engineered with vents to promote the flow of air, bringing in fresh air and expelling carbon dioxide created by the large fungus gardens. The scientists filled the ant next with concrete to excavate it: 10 tons of concrete were needed.
Related: Symbiotic relationship between ants and bacteria - Ants on Stilts for Science - Giant Nests of Yellow-jackets
Royal corruption is rife in the ant world
Interesting. I am not convinced of the “corruption” but maybe the research itself provides more evidence of this trait not just being interesting but equivalent to corruption.
Related: Ants on Stilts for Science - Swimming Ants - posts on ants
When Ants Go Marching, They Count Their Steps by Bjorn Carey
The ant “pedometer” technique was first proposed in 1904, but it remained untested until now.
Scientists trained desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, to walk along a straight path from their nest entrance to a feeder 30 feet away. If the nest or feeder was moved, the ants would break from their straight path after reaching the anticipated spot and search for their goal.
A simple example of the scientific process (another one posted yesterday about birds and global warming).
(more…)
Scientists discover swimming ants
“We were sort of dumbfounded.”
Dr Robson says it is amazing that the ants can survive in such a hostile environment.
“We’ve been doing a lot of studies on their foraging behaviour and there’s a lot of things that eat them, so when they’re swimming, fish will sometimes eat them, mud skippers will eat them, crabs will attack them,” he said.
It is great to see experts can still be so suprised by nature.
Study reveals classic symbiotic relationship between ants, bacteria
Ants that tend and harvest gardens of fungus have a secret weapon against the parasites that invade their crops: antibiotic-producing bacteria that the insects harbor on their bodies.
“Every ant species [that we have examined] has different, highly modified structures to support different types of bacteria,” says Currie. “This indicates the ants have rapidly adapted to maintain the bacteria. It also indicates that the co-evolution between the bacteria and the ants, as well as the fungus and parasites, has been occurring since very early on, apparently for tens of millions of years.”
Furthermore, Currie says, the fact that the species have coexisted for so long means there might be a mechanism in place to decrease the rate of antibiotic resistance - which could help address a significant problem facing modern medicine. “We can learn a lot about our own use of antibiotics from this system,” he says.
Read more about the overuse of antibiotics
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