Ant likes urban life

Thanks to the favorable living conditions, the coconut ant nests in the city contained several million individuals and tens of thousands of gods.

Coconut ant.Photo: uci.edu.

'Coconut ants find ways to take advantage of urban life', National Geographic quotes Purdue University's announcement, USA.

National Geographic said that Professor Grzegorz Buczkowski, a pest researcher from Purdue University, and colleagues studied coconut nests ( Tapinoma sessile ) at three locations around the campus. He discovered that the coconut ant nests in the city are getting bigger and more complicated than the ones in the forest.

They are called coconut ants because their bodies smell coconut water when squeezed. This is one of the ants that humans often meet in the house. The number of coconut ants in each forest group ranges from 100 to 10,000. Even many nests only have an average of 50, including one god.

"But when it came to urban areas, they built super-teams with the number of over 6 million worker ants and 50,000 queens', Buczkowski said.

In semi-wild areas - that is, forests and houses - Buczkowski found ant nests with about 500 workers and a queen.

'It is possible that when ants come close to urban areas they meet more favorable conditions for food, shelter and other resources. In the forest they have to compete with other species for food and nesting position. But in cities they are not competitive anymore. People give them shelter and food , 'the professor remarked.

Buczkowski said that if coconut ants were able to build super nest in the city, other ants could do the same thing. However, he did not find any evidence that other ants were able to adapt to the new environment and form super-large herds like coconut ants.

The professor said that human knowledge of urban ants' coconut nest can help us control harmful insects in the home, while ensuring that they do not destroy beneficial insects. .