Hey bug-lovers.
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Hey bug-lovers. A great new ant video just dropped from SyneAnts. He's just getting his channel going and the video has only 3 views. Why not stop by and say hi?
Ant keeping in NZ is kind of like "hard mode" for the hobby as the islands have only 11 native species due to the recent glacial past. It's a fascinating example of taxonomic radiation in action.
#ants #insects #bugs #cute #CuteAnimals #antArmy #videos #youTube #newZealand #nz #antKeeping
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Hey bug-lovers. A great new ant video just dropped from SyneAnts. He's just getting his channel going and the video has only 3 views. Why not stop by and say hi?
Ant keeping in NZ is kind of like "hard mode" for the hobby as the islands have only 11 native species due to the recent glacial past. It's a fascinating example of taxonomic radiation in action.
#ants #insects #bugs #cute #CuteAnimals #antArmy #videos #youTube #newZealand #nz #antKeeping
If New Zealand is a group of isolated islands with only a few ants at the start of the adaptive radiation process then Borneo is the opposite. Borneo is the location of maximal ant species diversity globally, while it's also an island, the ants of Borneo can be found in surrounding islands and on nearby continents.
What conditions lead to high species diversity for ants?
If we looked into the past were there other locations that might have had even greater diversity?
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F myrmepropagandist shared this topic
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If New Zealand is a group of isolated islands with only a few ants at the start of the adaptive radiation process then Borneo is the opposite. Borneo is the location of maximal ant species diversity globally, while it's also an island, the ants of Borneo can be found in surrounding islands and on nearby continents.
What conditions lead to high species diversity for ants?
If we looked into the past were there other locations that might have had even greater diversity?
@futurebird 1/3
my amatuer guess:during the major glaciations of the Pleistocene, Borneo would have been connected with the asian mainland, as well as with most of the rest of the indonesian archipelago, due to lower sea levels. There were several of these major glaciation events, and each would have lasted about 110,000 years. Think of it: lower sea levels enable many asian ant lineages to expand into Borneo.
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@futurebird 1/3
my amatuer guess:during the major glaciations of the Pleistocene, Borneo would have been connected with the asian mainland, as well as with most of the rest of the indonesian archipelago, due to lower sea levels. There were several of these major glaciation events, and each would have lasted about 110,000 years. Think of it: lower sea levels enable many asian ant lineages to expand into Borneo.
@futurebird 2/3
Then, ice sheets shrink, sea level rises, and Borneo ants are isolated, evolving separately from mainland lineages for 10,000 to 25,000 years. This cycle repeats several times. Each repetition increases ant diversity. And it takes place in a warm, rainy environment (Borneo is right under the intertropical convergence zone), with steep mountains and volcanically enriched soils. -
@futurebird 2/3
Then, ice sheets shrink, sea level rises, and Borneo ants are isolated, evolving separately from mainland lineages for 10,000 to 25,000 years. This cycle repeats several times. Each repetition increases ant diversity. And it takes place in a warm, rainy environment (Borneo is right under the intertropical convergence zone), with steep mountains and volcanically enriched soils.I'm interested in that repetition and how it could, given repeated isolation and regrouping lead to greater species diversity.
THIS is starting to sound like a fun problem to model with a simulation.
You have automata with a set of genes and they can breed and recombine. Those that better match their environmental patch are more successful at this.
Hmmm.
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I'm interested in that repetition and how it could, given repeated isolation and regrouping lead to greater species diversity.
THIS is starting to sound like a fun problem to model with a simulation.
You have automata with a set of genes and they can breed and recombine. Those that better match their environmental patch are more successful at this.
Hmmm.
@futurebird I think sea level change as a species pump is a common idea in Pleistocene and Pliocene biogeography, so I'm guessing there's already a lot of research on it, but so far I'm only finding paywalled papers like this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1055790317306802
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If New Zealand is a group of isolated islands with only a few ants at the start of the adaptive radiation process then Borneo is the opposite. Borneo is the location of maximal ant species diversity globally, while it's also an island, the ants of Borneo can be found in surrounding islands and on nearby continents.
What conditions lead to high species diversity for ants?
If we looked into the past were there other locations that might have had even greater diversity?
@futurebird I think I was taught that the place where you see the most diversity of a thing is the place it's probably from.
So like, the English language is about the same from Washington to California, but if you go to England there's *a lot* more diversity of accents per square mile, because it's been mutating the longest in England.
