The New Digs

Our yard here in Champaign is about the size of a postage stamp, but it is in an older part of town and the ant fauna isnât half bad. In moving up from Tucson Iâve traded my desert harvester ants for a more midwestern fauna. Hereâs what I uncovered yesterday in a few minutes of looking around:

Camponotus pennsylvanicus

Camponotus nearcticus

Lasius neoniger

Formica pallidefulva group sp.

Paratrechina sp.

Tapinoma sessile

Myrmecina americana

Tetramorium âsp. Eâ

Ponera pennsylvanica

As a rule of thumb, older parts of town are better for ant diversity than newer developments. Iâve found this pattern nearly everywhere Iâve lived. The initial disturbance to put in development is severe: removal of trees, bulldozing, paving, seeding with dense turfgrass. Ant communities can take decades to rebuild, and they typically have to do it in the face of the pesty introduced species that thrive in new developments.

There are other reasons live in older neighborhoods, of course. Better architecture, for one. But I like the richness of a more mature ecological community.

More like this

My earlier list of the most-studied ant species contained a few omissions.  Here is a more inclusive list: Ant species sorted by number of BIOSIS-listed publications, 1984-2008 The Top 10 Species Publications Solenopsis invicta 984 Linepithema humile 343 Lasius niger 250 Formica…
...to the quiz. 1. Myrmica fracticornis undescribed species 2. Tetramorium "sp. E." (formerly, T. caespitum) 3. Lasius neoniger 4. Tapinoma sessile 5. Myrmecina americana 6. Pheidole pilifera Most of these were straightforward, but the Myrmica and the Lasius required as much luck as skill to pick…
By request, I have now organized the ant photos by subfamily.  This mimics the arrangement from the old site.  For the smug-muggers out there who want to know how it works, I basically set up an "old journal" gallery and put the genus names and links into the caption box.  I used CSS to set all…
Figure 1. For the 32 most-studied ant species, the percentage of publications 1984-2008 in various contexts. In thinking about where the myrmecological community ought to devote resources in the age of genomics, it occcured to me that putting some numbers on where researchers have previously…

Alex

it all double dutch to me it scientific names errrrr

By Jack jumper (not verified) on 10 Aug 2008 #permalink

Agreed, new developments are ecologically sterile. Glad to hear you're flourishing in your new home. I'm sure the desert will miss you.

That is probably F. pallidefulva itself, though I've seen F. incerta in one Bloomington neighborhood-- where there weren't many trees.

I'll be interested to learn which Paratrechina you have?

Ahem! - Myrmicina?

By James C. Trager (not verified) on 12 Aug 2008 #permalink

At some point I'll have to stick all of these under the scope to confirm the ID. Thanks for the spelling correction, James.

After writing that first list, I've since seen Solenopsis molesta and Temnothorax curvispinosus.