Most new species these days are discovered in remote corners of the world: jungles, deserts, mountain regions and even deep oceans. The chances of finding a rare species in the middle of an urban setting like the Triangle are slim.
At least, that’s what NC State researcher Michelle Kirchner thought.
“I was not expecting to find these ants at all, so I was shocked when I found an entire colony,” Kirchner told NC State’s news service. A Ph.D. student in applied ecology and entomology, Kirchner studies the diversity and ecology of tree ants in temperate tree canopies.
“With the whole colony, we’re able to document every life stage of this rare ant species, which is a first for science,” added Kirchner.
The key words there are “rare ant species.”
Kirchner not only found an ant species so rare that only a handful of records exist across the entire eastern US, but she’s the first to document an entire colony.
Aphaenogaster mariae Forel is a rare type of spine-waisted ant. While most of its cousins live on the forest floor, these ants live most of their lives high in tree canopies. That’s common for ants in tropical areas, but until now not much was known about whether this type of ant lived in urban settings. In fact, there were no photos or documented collections of males of this species. Scientists don’t know how many populations of this species of ant exist, where they are (except in North Carolina’s Triangle region) or even what habitats they prefer.
To study ants in tree canopies, Kirchner uses a giant slingshot and rope to climb high into the tree to see which ants are living there and explore how they contribute to the health of the forest. Her recent findings offer some clues.
“The queens of these species are pretty small compared to other ant queens,” said Kirchner. “The small body type is similar to parasitic ant queens since being small makes them more easily mistaken as a fellow worker by a colony she is about to infiltrate.”
More research must be done to understand why the queen ants are so small, but it’s an interesting theory. There are about 1,000 ants in the colony, but it’s not known what role the ants play in the overall ecosystem.
“We don’t know how important this species is to the ecology of forests in the Triangle,” said Kirchner. “This different surveying effort has changed what we’re finding and our perspective on what’s possible out there. There are still discoveries to be made, even in the Neuse River game lands.”
“This is a great case of a species that’s so rarely encountered that it’s impossible to draw any conclusions about how rare it actually is or isn’t,” said Elsa Youngsteadt, Ph.D., associate professor of applied ecology at NC State and a coauthor of the study. “Michelle’s observations suggest that these species are fairly localized, but more work needs to be done.”
The study is published in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington.