The Argentine ant global set of supercolonies is one of the largest cooperative societies on earth, it is also one of the most aggressive. World war ant has been raging for over a century, from Japan to South Africa.
But where did it all begin? 🧵
Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) are about 2.5mm in size, native to Argentina, and considered an opportunistic, flexible and aggressive species. Within their native range their genetic diversity is wide and different colonies regularly fight each other.
However, outside of Argentina their genetic diversity is extremely low, and often entire continent's worth of Argentine ants can be traced back to a small number of individuals. Despite living in separate colonies these ants recognise one another as kin, and do not attack.
The result of this is that invasive colonies of Argentine ants form peaceful 'supercolonies', capable of dominating huge areas of land. One of the largest we know of is called the Very Large Colony, stretching from San Diego to San Francisco, with maybe one trillion members.
This colony formed over a century ago, when ants were accidentally transported from Buenos Aires in the 1890's to Louisana on steamboats and then California, likely by train. Their internal cooperation and externally directed violence has made them unstoppable.
They eat seeds, farm aphids for honeydew and destroy other ant's nests for food. Seed-harvester ants have been known to plug up their entrances to prevent Argentine ants entering, but they will wait and starve them out, launching waves of assaults until they decimate the nest.
The Very Large Colony has one major rival supercolony - the Lake Hodges colony - which is separated by several freeways. In 2004 researchers realised that 30 million ants a year were being killed on the borders between the two colonies, ants fighting over the bodies of their dead
The battlefields between the colonies can stretch for miles, places where ants wrestle with one another for unknown amounts of time, ripping off legs, antennaes, heaping up corpses and shifting backwards and forwards as territory is won or lost.
California has been won by the Argentine ants, and the Very Large Colony control the port cities of Richmond, Oakland, San Francisco, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and San Diego. This is important because they have used the ports to spread across the world, exploiting the sea lanes.
We'll look at this in the next thread - the global dominance of the Argentine ants by use of the global shipping system. We'll also see how other ants are fighting back against this intrusion - welcome to world war ant!
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Having examined the invasion and consolidation of the Argentine ant in California, in particular their control over the major port cities, we can now turn to their colonisation of the rest of the world through the exploitation of human-run shipping lanes.
For background details on World War Ant and the Argentine ant supercolony phenomenon start here:
In the previous thread we saw how the VLC (Very Large Colony) controlled access to the ports. One of their first presumed dispersals was to New Zealand, possibly in 1990.
"Each month millions of Argentine
ants die along battlefronts that extend for miles around San Diego, where clashes occur with three other colonies in wars that may have been going on since the species arrived in the state a
century ago"
Some notes on ant warfare 🧵
Many are aware that a world war between Argentine ant supercolonies is currently underway, across multiple continents, and against multiple ant 'nations'.
Ant conflict differs from species to species and from scenario to scenario. Some use sheer numbers in tight phalanx-like organisations to swamp the enemy, which may include ants many times their individual size.
The story of Pakistan's nuclear research and defence programmes perfectly illustrates the battle for science against 'djinnthink' or religious superstition. A struggle between Nobel prize winning physicists and men who believed in acquiring electricity from the spirit world. 🧵
Although post-war Pakistan was not initially interested in researching nuclear technology, by the 1960s the country was in a relatively good position to start building up scientific infrastructure, including a space agency and nuclear tech institute both in 1961.
The key player in these developments was an academic called Mohammed Abdus Salam. A Cambridge educated theoretical physicist, Salam went on to share the 1979 Nobel Prize for work on electroweak unification theory, the first Muslim to win the award in the sciences.
One straightforward theory as to why prehistoric Venus figurines are overweight, is because they depicted real obese Palaeolithic women. But is it possible to get so fat during an Ice Age, and why would you? Are there modern ethnographic examples of such overfeeding? 🧵
Let's assume that Upper Palaeolithic foragers were capable of bringing down a mammoth or rhino once in a while (they were). This level of fatty meat caloric excess for a band of say, 25 people, would be more than comfortable. Especially if one or two women were chosen to get fat.
Both Tahiti and Nauru offer examples of cultures where select women (and sometimes men) were secluded and fattened up. In the case of Nauru this was achieved despite not having a large overabundance of food.
Many people know that pre-industrial pollution from Greek and Roman metalworking can be identified in ice cores.
Many don't know that lead pollution from Native American metalworking also appears in sediment cores, from pre-Columbian copper and lead metallurgy. 🧵
Copper working in North America may have started between 10-7,000 years ago. During the Archaic period hunter-gatherers were making copper tools and ornaments in a region stretching from central Canada to the eastern Great Lakes
The mining and metal processing released lead into the air and ultimately the water, where it peaked around 6,000 years ago.
5,700 years ago a hunter-gatherer in Denmark chewed on a piece of birch tar.
In 2019 scientists were able to extract her DNA, as well as fragments of DNA from her mouth.
The result is a fascinating snapshot into prehistoric life, health and death. 🧵
To start with, what is birch tar?
If you heat the bark of the birch tree without too much oxygen being present you get a sticky black tarry substance. This was used throughout the Stone Age as a type of glue for arrowheads and hunting weapons.
It's common to find chunks of birch tar throughout post ice age Europe, when birch trees became more plentiful. The lumps of tar often have teeth marks impressed into them, perhaps as people softened it for use, or maybe relieving toothache with the numbing tarry taste.