The Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) is an invasive species that harms local species and as such everything must be done to stop the invasion.
I saw a news in one of the newspapers about the discovery of swarms of the Argentine ant in different places in Israel. The Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) is an invasive species that harms local species and as such everything must be done to stop the invasion.
The damage is to local insect species, to small vertebrates that live on the ground and of course to agricultural crops. It turns out that there is reason for concern, since one of the ways to prevent "invading" ant species from continuing to take over is to cause friction between species, that is, to let the invading ants from one swarm destroy the neighboring swarm (of the same species) and thus prevent a "massive invasion" and damage to local species.
The method of "divide and rule" does not work in the case of the Argentine ant, researchers who tried to "infest" a swarm in their neighbor saw that there is no desirable or acceptable response. Usually when ants encounter ants of the same species that belong to another swarm, a fight occurs that ends with the destruction of one of the swarms. This is not how the Argentine women behaved, they treated the ants as members of the same swarm, even when they were from distant places and different colonies.
The conclusion is that all Argentine ants belong to the same swarm or to a giant colony, a giant colony since swarms of Argentine ants live today on all continents (with the exception of Antarctica), and it turns out that all the swarms in whatever they belong to a super swarm, that is, as far as the ants are concerned, they are all in whatever They belong to the same swarm (the same family)! A phenomenon that can only be compared to humanity (except that people fight each other no matter what they are... people, not Argentines).
Argentinians were once confined to South America, where they live in huge swarms. With the "help of people" the ants were distributed all over the world. Swarms exist along about 600 km along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, along 900 km along the coast of California and a huge swarm has settled on the west coast of Japan. These are only the big and famous swarms, many and less big scattered all over the world.
At first it was thought that each "giant swarm" constituted a colony whose daughters would not tolerate the presence of subjects from another colony, a thought that gave hope for treating the invasion, but it turned out that even ants from two giant colonies thousands of kilometers apart see themselves as daughters of the same swarm and "exchange blessings" on the spot Fight. In other words, all the billions of Argentine women who live in huge swarms, in super-colonies, all belong to a "global colony"
Researchers gathered ants from distant colonies from all over the world and tried to mate one with the other, the ants greeted each other and behaved like "family members", the results of the experiments are published in Insect Sociaux. The test revealed that all the ants have the same "profile" for detecting the smell of hydrocarbons.
The only accepted explanation is that all the ants do belong to the same family, all from the same genetic source, that is, they are all daughters of a single original swarm, and the one who scattered the daughters of the colony and created the huge swarm is man.
22 תגובות
Michael
A little more hope
I see that apart from you my father is a serious investor, your hands will be strong
Thanks, Higgs.
I hope this response is a sign that you have a little less load (but no less income) and you can come back and comment here as before.
Michael Rothschild
Well done for the consistency. You still continue to maintain and strengthen this site
B5:
Regarding aggressiveness, the following sentence appears in the first link:
But, in the world of insects, these ants are truly a living terror. They are very aggressive and readily overtake other ant species, even ants that are much larger and with powerful stings.
What is written in the second link is not that their levels of aggression are low in general but only among themselves.
As for the vaccine for humans, it is written in the first link that they are not big enough to hurt them.
However, it is written that they are very harmful to humans and among other things:
Argentine ants are a terrible nuisance in gardens and orchards
In your link from comment 16 it says that one of the reasons why these ants do not attack ants from another swarm is due to low levels of aggression (this must be only part of the reason, along with the genetic similarity).
But I think that low levels of aggression probably explain the fact that the nuisance has not been dealt with until today, these ants do not attack humans or large animals and the damage they cause is mainly environmental (which means it is not a high priority unfortunately).
Michael,
The link you found is very interesting. It is written there that not only is there hostility between different swarms in Argentina, but also that ants have many natural enemies such as bacteria, and fungal parasites. It seems to me that this information rather undermines the somewhat dramatic conclusion implied by Assaf's article:
Not "all" these ants in the whole world belong to the same super swarm and it turns out that they are not exactly immune.
Despite the massive invasion, it seems that it will be possible to find a natural solution to their destruction. It must be a matter of time and money (or damages versus benefits).
Further to comment 14:
Here: http://cisr.ucr.edu/argentine_ant.html
It says that the Argentine ant has no known natural enemies.
This answers the exact question of B5 but it ignores what was said in the previous link which says that the ant is in many cases the enemy of mutantia.
By the way, following my previous response:
It is interesting that the "wonders of nature are orderly and intelligent from the beginning" (according to Hugin's response 5) actually did themselves what Hugin said should not be done.
I wonder if her prophecy will also be fulfilled in those "wonders of nature" and a swarm of ants will eat them.
It would just be pretty hard to manage here without nature.
I searched a little more following question B5 and found the following link:
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0403.htm
It turns out that in Argentina - the country of origin of Argentine ants, their natural enemy is...
Argentinian ports.
Yes!
In the land of origin, the genetic diversity suggested by Arnon actually developed naturally!
The phenomenon of "one swarm" is probably true (according to this article) only for ants that left Argentina.
This opens up the possibility of importing Argentinian ants that are a little different from those distributed in the world (you have to check if there is a species in Argentina that fights them).
However, something written later in the article says that you might want to think twice because precisely the lack of genetic variation may be the weak point of these ants.
It seems to me that this is the right moment to clear the stage for professionals on the subject.
I decided to look at Wikipedia.
This is what they know there about the extermination of Argentine ants:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linepithema_humile#Pest_control
Do these ants have a natural enemy in South America that can be imported into the areas they have invaded?
Or is there a fear that the natural enemy of the Manali will become an invader as well?
I just claimed that supposedly what is under control is not necessarily under control, I hope I manage to explain myself.
In any case, progress and development are very essential to man, and if God exists, I'm sure he blesses the fact that his children develop and move forward (that says something about him, doesn't it?).
White Dwarf:
No one was dealing with an operative issue here.
All in all, a discussion was held here about the applicability of a certain proposal after many years of trying to deal with the ant using various poisons and without success.
It is quite possible that he will find a suitable poison.
It is also possible that this poison will have extremely harmful effects on humans - as it became clear after many years of use - with other poisons as well.
In this sense - the use of poisons has no advantage over genetic solutions. Perhaps on the contrary (what is more, one of the effects of the poison may be a genetic change in one of the species in the food chain it passes through and here - unlike genetic engineering - it will be an unexpected change).
In any case, Hugin's rant is pointless. It is simply a threat along the lines of the stories of the Tower of Babel and the Tree of Knowledge: if you study and develop too much - God will punish you.
It seems to me that the simplest of all of these would be some exterminator! Don't you think so?
If you developed the ant you wanted by genetic modification or some type of mutation.
There is some truth in Hugin's words, you never know what type will develop, there may be a type of super ant that will surpass all other ants and become a more serious pest than the Argentine ant.
Only if one has the knowledge and knows for sure what the consequences are, then such an intervention should be carried out.
In any case, if you have the knowledge and everything, it is not certain that you have the tools, and even if you have the tools, it is not certain that it is applicable, and even if it is usable, it is impossible to know who will win the Argentine war or the nemutation (a word I invented for an ant that has undergone a mutation-genetic change, all rights (C) reserved for me).
Good luck to us.
light:
I'm not claiming that Arnon's proposal is applicable, but I wouldn't wave it off lightly.
It is not at all clear that there is a special mechanism for identifying members of the same sex.
It may be a collection of features that disruption in any of them will result in the desired alienation.
A very good candidate in my opinion is the type of pheromones that are secreted.
The main problem with the whole issue is that since the identification is by definition a communication mechanism, it may be necessary to introduce two mutations to change both the "transmitter" and the "receiver" and it will be necessary to do this in several individuals at the same time to create the breeding nucleus.
Changing the transmitter and the receiver in a compatible way is not a trivial matter because it requires more understanding than we have about the relationship between genotype and phenotype and probably the only way to do this would be to copy relevant genes from another type of ant.
If you manage to create such a nucleus and multiply it to serious dimensions, and if you manage to do this without harming the other properties of the ants, then after a while you can release such groups into nature and there is no need to be careful about leaving the swarms as one swarm (one swarm also cannot operate on a large area, so you must give for the swarm to split up and fight for the niche with the original species).
By the way, I am not familiar with the lifestyles of these ants, but I assume that it is desirable to inject the mutation into a few eggs and not a whole ant (regardless of its aristocratic status) for two reasons:
1. It is easier to introduce a mutation into a single cell than to introduce it into all the reproductive cells of a living ant.
2. An isolated group of ants will probably crown their own queen, so there is no need to take a ready-made queen.
All this is probably very complicated but it may be possible to do it.
Arnon,
To realize your plan you need:
1. Locate the exact location in the ant genome that is responsible for the recognition mechanism of family members
2. Capture a queen of one of the swarms and make her a mutation that will change the above position
3. Return the queen to the swarm
4. Make sure that only the queen's offspring are not recognized by their sisters and not the queen herself, because then the queen will be destroyed by her daughters and another ant will become queen in her place.
5. Repeat the process for each individual swarm
6. After only one swarm remains, prevent it from splitting into separate swarms and eradicate
No wonder.
Hello Hugin. I understand you're living in a XNUMXs sci-fi movie.
Well, once again we came back to the conclusion that the sages of truth have already said, "Go to the lazy ant, learn its ways and sit in the shade".
Larnon: For a scientist who tries to realize this again and again and doesn't learn a lesson, a film of living, horrible threats awaits, a veritable swarm that will be destroyed... and why would a creature that disrupts the wonders of an orderly and intelligent nature in the first place?
Very simple: take a queen and change one bit in her DNA, zig-zag there is a war between the swarms.
The discovery about the ants could also be opened this way:
Man is a creature that takes over his environment and consumes it and its resources. He does not see the long term in preserving his environment to the point of cutting down the branch he is sitting on.
Are you writing about invading ants???
They were here thousands of years before us.
Maybe try to sponsor the Harinmal in Argentina...
It's time for man to start spreading the ant food around the world as well