The antsy look she flashed to her field colleague when asked how she possibly identifies which species of ant she finds in the field….
“The ants in your kitchen are Argentine ants. They were carried around the world in sugar shipments, and now they thrive everywhere there is a Mediterranean climate. They decimate the native ant population (competing for food) with an invasion that spreads from the edge of human development. Unlike most ants, they are not aggressive between colonies. They don’t fight much, and that’s we have so many. Some have even suggested they are a supercolony, with less genetic diversity from an invasive founder effect. But when some Argentine ants ate a German cockroach in the lab, they came under attack from the others. Each colony has a colony-specific odor, but once they ate the cockroach, they smelled different. Their lack of aggression relates to similarity of food, not genetics. [image of fast food flashes on the screen]”
From the Bio-X Symposium on UnNatural evolution (agenda)
I last saw her in 2004, and she inspired my very first blog post.
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