Connection between Humans and Fire Ants
Over the course of generations, ants and humans have been interacting and learning from each other in different ways. Ants are fairly similar to humans in the way they set up their colonies and hold a certain structure to their whole system for communication, order and such. Ants are very knowledgeable insects that we humans could learn a lot from. Specifically, for the fire ant this is a cool functional significance that I had never known about fire ants until now. They are more engineers using physics and robotics than anything else that I could have imagined. Researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology wanted to better understand physics behind a particular fire ant behavior being: forming rafts.
These collective fire ant structures are formed by interlocking of legs and mandibles of the fire ants. In the event of flooding, or some other form of water disaster, entire colonies come together to form these rafts to avoid drowning seen in the video below. These fire ant rafts could be best described as viscoelastic materials. The fire ant rafts are never static. As the squirming ants' bodies make and break bonds, the raft is both able to store energy in the bonds and release that very same energy when the bonds break. This type of behavior happens outside of the normal realm making it extraordinary. There is so much value to these fire ants because they can teach us just as much about subject matter than we could ever know. Researchers today are learning more and more from insects like the fire ant that can posses such an amazing talent and skill like they have to connect real life problems and issues to human life form.
These collective fire ant structures are formed by interlocking of legs and mandibles of the fire ants. In the event of flooding, or some other form of water disaster, entire colonies come together to form these rafts to avoid drowning seen in the video below. These fire ant rafts could be best described as viscoelastic materials. The fire ant rafts are never static. As the squirming ants' bodies make and break bonds, the raft is both able to store energy in the bonds and release that very same energy when the bonds break. This type of behavior happens outside of the normal realm making it extraordinary. There is so much value to these fire ants because they can teach us just as much about subject matter than we could ever know. Researchers today are learning more and more from insects like the fire ant that can posses such an amazing talent and skill like they have to connect real life problems and issues to human life form.
Coping with these Invasive Insects
Fire ants are invasive insects that are brought into an environment that naturally isn't theirs to reside in. Invasive animals are often most abundant in habitats impacted by humans, especially man-made habitats, such as roadsides, urban and rural developments, and areas of intensive agricultural activity. The invasive fire ant, is a notoriously pesky species that benefits when humans disturb natural areas. Fire ants are social insects and the reproductive phase of their life cycle is perpetuated by queens leaving their parent colonies, mating on the wing and landing in an area far from their parent colonies and starting new ones.
There was a study done by (NSF) that fire ant queens prefer to start new colonies in disturbed habitats, such as roadsides. This particular feature of fire and life history-disturbed habitat selection during dispersal- may be one of the primary reasons that enables fire ants and other invasive ants to adapt to man-modified habitats created by humans. This is a representation of how fire ants are dispersed throughout regions and where they like to start new colonies and how humans are a factor in this because of construction of transportation systems such as roads and sidewalks.
There was a study done by (NSF) that fire ant queens prefer to start new colonies in disturbed habitats, such as roadsides. This particular feature of fire and life history-disturbed habitat selection during dispersal- may be one of the primary reasons that enables fire ants and other invasive ants to adapt to man-modified habitats created by humans. This is a representation of how fire ants are dispersed throughout regions and where they like to start new colonies and how humans are a factor in this because of construction of transportation systems such as roads and sidewalks.