Ant Highway, February 2008

The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, (NESCent), in collaboration with the Understanding Evolution web site project at the University of California, Berkeley, produces brief, monthly stories and podcasts for the public about current happenings in evolutionary biology. The series, Evolution in the News, along with links to background literature and classroom resources, are available on the Understanding Evolution web site at www.understandingevolution.org. AIBS is pleased to be hosting on its YouTube channel the Evolution in the News podcasts from NESCent.

Army ants live in large nomadic colonies, conducting spectacular foraging raids during which thousands of ants run together, killing and collecting any prey that don't get away fast enough. In the species Eciton burchellii, these raids take place daily or every other day, but they never go to the same place two days in a row-- so the thousands of foraging ants never manage to tamp down a smooth highway through the leaf litter and fallen branches of their rainforest home. This uneven surface would slow the ants down, except that some ants form a public works department, filling the uneven surfaces with their own bodies. Ants can run over surfaces with ant-plugged holes almost as fast as they can over smooth surfaces. Once their nestmates have run on top of them, the plug-ants get up and follow the trail back home.

Biologists at the University of Bristol studied this pothole-plugging behavior in army ants in Panama; their findings are published in the June, 2007 issue of the journal Animal Behaviour.

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• AIBS
• biology
• NEScent