| The World's Biggest Supercolony of Ants Under Threat |
|
| |
| Investigators |
| Professor Seigo Higashi, Graduate School of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Japan
Song Anren M.Sc., Graduate School of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Japan
|
What is the Issue? |
| SPECIES THREATENED |
|
The red wood ants (Formica yessensis) dwell along a strip of shoreline on the Ishikari coast of northern Japan. In the early 1970s when Professor Higashi first began studying this supercolony of Japanese red wood ants there were approximately 45,000 nests with connecting tunnels extending nearly 20 kilometres along the shore of the Japan Sea. It was estimated that the colony had 307 million red wood ants, including about 306 million workers and about 1.1 million queens. The colony is thought to be about 1000 years old. Since 1973 the supercolony has been under siege. The construction of infrastructure for a new port on Ishikari Bay has occurred on top of 30% of the ant megalopolis. This has reduced the number of red wood ants living there by more than half. This study is analyzing the DNA and genetic structure of the red wood ant supercolony. Results will assist the conservation of this truly remarkable and ancient ant colony.
|
What is our goal? |
| CONSERVATION OF BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY, HABITAT MAINTENANCE OF ANT SUPERCOLONY.
|
| The world's biggest supercolony of ants under threat. |
Where we currently stand. |
| Sampling of DNA in five colonies, including the supercolony, has been undertaken. Genetic relatedness of within and between-colonies, and within and between-nests within the supercolony was examined using microsatellite DNA markers. Results show that kin relatedness within the supercolony itself is not as low as was expected, given its large size. Within-nest relatedness tests indicate that most nestmates are siblings in some of the nests, but not in all of them. No significant correlation was found between relatedness and distance of the two nests chosen for between-nests testing. Relatedness between all colonies sampled was low, indicating genetic distance from each other, which suggests that it is unlikely that the supercolony is made up of a mixture of different colonies of different origins. It seems likely that the colony stems from only one origin and further genetic testing may confirm this. Ant behavioral responses between nests from distant locations within the supercolony were also examined. When individuals from different colonies artificially encountered each other in a laboratory setting, queens initially hesitated to visit foreign colonies for 24 hours, but would visit after this time. However, no hesitation was observed between different nests of the supercolony. When different colonies were mixed in a box, an antagonistic response in workers was detected. Between different nests of the supercolony, however, there was no antagonistic response in any behaviors. Funding for this project has been continued through September 2001 to support further research on the genetics and origin of the supercolony. Funding for this project assisted Song Anren in completing his M.Sc., and continued funding from Global Forest will enable further research on the genetics and origins of the supercolony.
|
You can help this project - find out how. |
|
| |
