Those Clever Ants, Part 2

I’ve been looking here at the extraordinary capabilities of ants, that stem primarily from their social nature. Ants have an elaborate communication system, which they use to attract one another, raise an alarm, recruit new members, control group activities, and groom one another; especially the queen. Any outsider who does not smell like a colony mate will get warded off or attacked. Yet some sneaky and cunning solitary critters—beetles, mites, wasps—are able to crack the colony’s communication code and live as a pampered member, getting workers to groom and feed them as they do the queen.

Most residents of a colony are female workers, who live a predominantly altruistic life. Biologists do not agree on referring to the actions of sterile workers as altruism, since it seems to contradict the “selfish gene” theory, which describes the activities of most critters as being dominated by a drive to propagate one’s own genes downstream. If so, why would a worker ant devote her life to the continuation of another’s life, another’s genes—specifically the queen? But workers do lavish extraordinary care on the queen and zealously guard and tend her eggs and offspring, forgoing any chance at having kid ants of their own. Let’s call it altruism. It still manages to do a superb job of sending the group’s genes into the future.

Ants exhibit their swarm intelligence in scores of ways—depending on their local habitat. To begin with, the size of a colony is wisely maintained—growing when conditions are favorable and stabilizing (or even shrinking) when times get lean. Some ants form symbiotic relationships with plants—weeding and pruning their environs, to promote the health of the plants they use. One clever species of ant lives unharmed on pitcher plants. As other bugs fall in, to become digested by the plant, ants get a safe home (no ant predator would dare invade) and the plant gets protection from ant-sized herbivores. Some ant species even farm—carrying preferred seeds into the colony, planting them in rich ant detritus, and later harvesting nutritious fruit.

Leafcutter ants cut pieces of vegetation (sometimes stripping human gardens in the process), carry them to the colony, and grow a fungus which they feed upon. Weaver ants create nesting enclosures by forming long chains with their bodies to curl leaves up, and then binding the edges together with larval silk. Some ants tend aphids and mealy bugs as cattle, which they milk (by tenderly stroking them) for a source of nutritious honeydew. Some species of ants coevolved with seed-producing plants—trading nectar for pollination and seed dispersal. And the list goes on.

I may have failed in absorbing most of the voluminous book Ants, but I got enough to significantly increase my appreciation, even if I still don’t revere those little black pests who insist on trying to set up their colony in my kitchen. I guess I should be grateful that army ants aren’t indigenous to these woods.