Flying ant season begins

[WD-40]

The Natural History Museum’s Identification and Advisory Service (IAS) has not had many flying ant enquiries from the public this year. Although, the few they have had, have reported much more spectacular swarms than usual.



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[ladylouise62]

This led me to find something a little more interesting. Apparently the Argentine ant had been introduced to the UK (and other places. "Not that interesting, loads of foreign creatures get moved around the world", I hear you say - but apparently (per Wikipedia),
as well as being happy to co-exist with natives,

"...Global "mega-colony"

According to research published in Insectes Sociaux in 2009, it was discovered that ants from three Argentine ant supercolonies in America, Europe, and Japan, that were previously thought to be separate, were in fact most likely to be genetically related. The three colonies in question were one in Europe, stretching 6,000 km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, the "Californian large" colony, stretching 900 km (560 miles) along the coast of California, and a third on the west coast of Japan.

Based on a similarity in the chemical profile of hydrocarbons on their cuticles of the ants from each colony, and on the ants non-aggressive and grooming behaviour when interacting, compared to their behaviour when mixing with ants from other super-colonies from the coast of Catalonia in Spain and from Kobe in Japan, researchers concluded that the three colonies studied actually represented a single global super-colony.

The researchers stated that "enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society", and had probably been spread and maintained by human travel.[4]"

So it's ants that will replace us, not cockroaches