California Ants Rally to Repel Argentine Invaders
The Golden State's native winter ants have stopped the seemingly inexorable march of their tiny foreign rivals
By Eliene Augenbraun
This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Argentine ants are taking over the world thanks to their weirdly cooperative nature: When two Argentines meet, unlike most ant species, they won't attack each other even if they're from different nests—and even if those nests are on different continents. This behavior has let them take over large swaths of territory from other, less cooperative ants. Nests can have multiple queens, which mate and lay eggs for ten years. You might say Argentine ants have built one giant global nest. As a result, these South American natives are now established in North America, Africa, Australia, and Europe.
But all is not lost. In 2008, ecologists at Stanford University who were tracking the advance of the Argentines in an area near campus discovered that winter ants, native to California, secrete some sort of poison that repels and even kills the invaders. This video shows how.
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