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One, big, worldwide ant colony
Yep. There’s on big wordlwide ant colony that’s covering the entire planet. Well, sort of.
Scientists have found that when mixing ants from seperate Argentine Ant mega-colonies around the world, they are tolerant of eachother.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) they have not formed one, large, super, world-wide, continuous colony. Instead what we have is a set of colonies spread around the world (which are very large, extending hunreds or even thousands of miles) which are tolerant of eachother when mixed.
While hind-sight is 20/20, this is actually not as surprising as people think. I mean, for a colony of ants to stretch 560 miles, as argentine ants do in California, implies that there is something a bit more involved than smell keeping these ants together. Whatever mechanism is in place for these ants to recognize eachother on s scale as large as 560 miles must translate to the entire species.
Very cool, none-the-less.
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It’s covered in-depth in The Superorganism (see more recent post on this site, The Hardest Book I’ve Read All Year).
It has to do with the unique scent that develops on the exoskeleton of the ants and whether or not their colonies are polygyous or monogynous.
Polygynous species are far tolerant of distant cousins scents than those of a more local cousin. It turns out that there is a bit more than scent at play… it’s an _evolving_ scent.