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I've been reading Natural History magazine, Oct. 2010 (available in Halifax on newsstands at Daily Grind, big bookstore at Bayer's Lake, and Paper Chase, etc.?), in which a column called "Life Zone: The Next Wave" by Robert R. Dunn caught my eye. His title for his latest column is "What makes an invasive species stick?", and his subject is just introduced kinds of ants. I gather that Dunn's specialty is social behaviour of animals. He begins his column with a lot of info' on Argentine ants, and one of this species' features is the ability to exhibit many queens per colony and to form supercolonies, even to the extent of having all the Argentine ants in a large area of thousands or more hectares as members of a big supercolony or "superorganism" (title of a great book on ants and termites I happen to have). In these supercolonies the chemical signatures of individual ants from various widespread parts of the colony's home range are sufficiently alike that they are recognized not as foreigners but as friends. Thus there is no fighting, and these supercolonies can concentrate on living and gathering and growing. In this way such species can end up outcompeting other species and displacing them without being aggressive. This trait of forming supercolonies seems to be characteristic of successfully invading species of ants, and one interesting example he gives is the European fire ant, Myrmica rubra, which has and is succcessfully spreading in Nova Scotia, as we know now. Unfortunately this column has not yet made it onto the www.naturalhistory.com Web site, but I have inquired for help in accessing it. Cheers from Jim in Wolfville (B.C. for a few more days)
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