Adventures Among Ants - Mark W. Moffett [6]
In addition to being highly social, ants are global, native to every continent except Antarctica and residing in virtually every climate. They have achieved universality by conquering Earth’s most abundant habitat: the interstices of things, including the most secluded portions of the leaf litter as well as pores in soil, cracks in rock, and gaps and hollows in trees, right up to their crowns. As ants sweep through and conquer, they force other small animal species to the fringes of this prime real estate.10 Ants sprang to prominence at the end of the Mesozoic Era, as the dinosaurs neared the end of their reign and when flowering plants first exploded in number, providing generous and distinctive crannies suitable for ant foraging and habitation, not to mention tasty seeds, fruit, and other edible plant parts and the insect prey that feed upon them. Housed and fed for success, ants have reigned over the landscape ever since.11
Marauder ant major workers serve as heavy-duty road equipment. This one in Singapore is gnawing at a twig, which she later dragged off the trunk trail.
1 strength in numbers
We tracked marauder ant trails on steep forested slopes, accompanied by the “wish-wash” sounds of hornbills in flight and mournful calls from a green imperial pigeon. As nightfall approached, we made our way back to the village of Toro, in a valley of brilliant green paddy fields at the edge of the forest. My guide, Pak Alisi, invited me into his home for tea. “You know,” he said, “here we call the ant you study ‘onti koko.’ That means you always find many together.”
Yes, I agreed. With the marauder ant, the group is everything.
FIELD NOTES, SULAWESI, INDONESIA, 1984
“We have three kinds of ants here,” declared Mr. Beeramoidin, the forestry officer at the village of Sullia in India. “A black one, a big red one, and a small red one that bites.”
I was twenty-four, a graduate student on a quest for the ant I had reason to believe had one of the most complexly organized societies in existence. A column of dust-speckled sunlight emblazoned a rectangle on the floor too bright to look at directly—a reminder of the intense dry heat outside. It was late November, and I was worried my choice of season wasn’t giving me the best weather for ant hunting.
As Mr. Beeramoidin spoke, his round, bespectacled head rocked from side to side. I had learned that this meant his attention was friendly and focused on me, and though I had only been in India a month, I had already adopted the same habit. I also found myself chewing betel nut, wearing a Gandhi-style lungi around my waist and flip-flops known locally as chapels on my feet, and using words like lakh, meaning a hundred thousand, to describe the number of workers in an ant colony.
Rocking my head in turn, I told Mr. Beeramoidin it was likely that scores of distinctive ants lived within a stone’s throw of his office, though even an experienced person would need a strong magnifier to tell many of them apart. I sought just one of them, Pheidologeton diversus, a species to which I later gave the name “marauder ant.”
In 1903, Charles Thomas Bingham, an Irish military officer stationed in Burma, provided detailed and theatrical descriptions of this ant. In one memorable passage, he wrote that “one large nest . . . was formed under my house in Moulmein. From this our rooms were periodically invaded by swarms, and every scrap of food they could find, and every living or dead insect of other kinds, was cleared out.” The locals found the swarms overpowering. “When these ants take up their abode in any numbers near a village in the jungles, they become a terrible nuisance. . . . I knew of a Karen village that had absolutely to shift because of the ants. No one could enter any of the houses day or night, or even