1. Kapitel 1 - The Importance of Ants

Det begynder godt.

Ants are everywhere, but only occasionally noticed. They run much of the terrestial world as the premier soil turners, channelers of energy, dominatrices of the insect fauna - yet receive only passing mention in textbooks on ecology. They employ the most complex forms of chemical communication of any animals and their social organization provides an illuminating contrast to that of human beings, but not one biologist in a hundred can describe the life cycle of any species. The neglect of ants in science and natural history is a shortcoming that should be remedied, for they represent the culmination of insect evolution, in the same sense that human beings represent the summit of vertebrate evolution.

for they represent the culmination of insect evolution

Hvor var det jeg læste noget i retning af at eventuelle rumvæsner sikkert ville lande ved den første og bedste myretue og ignorere menneskene? Og var der en vrissen triumf i udtalelsen? Det minder mig om et afsnit af Star Trek jeg ikke har set. Kun hørt om. Nogen kom og evakuerede blåhvalerne fra Jorden i sidste øjeblik. Resten af biomassen blev efterladt.

H&W skriver om myrerne at de sammen med termitterne og visse bier og hvepse er eusociale:

This means that two or more generations overlap in the society, adults take care of the young, and, most importantly, adults are divided into reproductive and nonreproductive castes, in other words queens and kings versus workers

Tag til Amazonas. Mål en flade på 100 gange 100 m ud (1 hektar). Her vil være over 8 millioner myrer og 1 million termitter. Omkring en tredjedel af hele biomassen i Amazonas udgøres af sociale insekter. Så vidt jeg forstår er træerne også del af biomassen. Hvilket kun gør det endnu mere overvældende.

Wilson (1988) identified 43 species in 26 genera in a single tree from the Tambopata Reserve in the Peruvian Amazon.

Der er cirka 8800 kendte myrearter på kloden. De eneste steder der ikke lever myrer i naturen er Antarktis, Island, Grønland, dele af Polynesien og nogle småøer hist og her.

Ants are resistant to hard radiation.

At least some ant species are also highly resistant to industrial pollution. Near a nitrogen plant in Poland, populations of Myrmica ruginodis and Lasius niger remained robust after other invertebrates became scarce.

Surprisingly, some species are even able to survive under water. Queens and workers of Formica species can live for up to 14 days or longer while submerged, during which time they are in an anesthetized condition and their oxygen consumption falls to between 5 and 20 percent of the usual resting rate.

H&W skriver at myrekolonien er en superorganisme. I biologisk research kan man analysere den som en sammenhængende enhed og sammenligne den med en organisme. De enkelte myrer kan sammenlignes med celler.

Although it is virtually impossible to dissect a higher organism into its constituent parts for study and then put it back together again, alive and whole, this can easily be done with an insect colony.

Finally, ants are extraordinary among social animals in the swiftness with which they adapt to radically altered environments in the laboratory and resume normal behavior under the gaze of the investigator.

resume normal behavior under the gaze of the investigator

I studiet af myrer, lover H&W, kan man indsamle viden om bl.a.:

The effects of competition on community structure.

I kapitlets sidste paragraf denne indrømmelse:

We confess to having written this book mainly to celebrate a personal muse...