Discussion
15 years ago if someone said that they saw a lot of little brown/black ants in Manhattan gathering food or out on the side walk you could be safe guessing it was Tetramorium immigrans the pavement ant. But today? You'd be more likely to be correct saying Lasius emarginatus. The pavement ants are not gone, but they have been displaced.
This isn't true in my Bronx neighborhood despite having a very similar built environment. Here in the Bronx the pavement ants are still the most numerous. 1/
We attribute this kind of change to the way that humans spread species all over the place sometimes causing environmental disasters.
But, no one is going to have a protest with "Save Tetramorium immigrans" signs. They are also an introduced species. Though they have been in the US for over 100 years most likely and are now a part of urban ecology.
But, I think it's naive to think that ants wouldn't have their own... geographic history.
Supercolonies have risen and fallen.
2/
Different parts of the world are dominated by one group of ants ... then another. When we look at the fossil record we are only seeing the broad trends. The world of ants is filled with turmoil and conquest.
The thing humans do that's bad is reduce species diversity. Introducing species, especially to islands can reduce diversity. That's the real danger.
A book I'm reading suggested that argentine ant supercolonies were the fault of human actions and this is true to a degree.
3/
But, in deep time there must have been many supercolonies. Many takeovers, many changes. And here is NYC we can see one happening in real time!
Will immigrans hold on to the south Bronx? Stay tuned to find out.
Both immigrans and emarginatus are formidable tramps.
Yes. "tramps" this I'm told is a more polite term than "invasive" since we should only use "invasive" for harmful species that are spreading.
I still think calling these ants "tramps" is a little rude. Poor things. 4/
In the imaginary library that contains not all just all books ever written but also all books that *could* have ever been, there is a multi-volume series, thick imposing tomes.
"The Complete Earth History of the Wars of the Ants"
The entire story from their emergence in the dawn days when the first flowers bloomed. The pages are wafer-thin, the print is small, but there are many illustrations.
We must make do with this wikipedia article (It's surprising!)
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