Army ants build bridges to shorten journeys through the rainforest

[Judi Lynn]

23-Nov-2015
Army ants build bridges to shorten journeys through the rainforest

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Army ants construct complex bridges from their own bodies to span gaps and create shortcuts in the floor of the tropical forests of Central America, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Army ants are nomadic species. They relocate their colonies throughout the rainforest on a regular basis. In order to facilitate the movement of their large population -- a colony can have up to 1 million individuals in some species -- on the very uneven forest floor, some of the ant workers use their own bodies to plug holes along the path traveled by the colony. These workers can also attach to each other to span larger gaps, effectively building living bridges made of several dozens of ants in some instances. These bridges can assemble and disassemble in a matter of seconds, allowing the ant colony to travel at high speed across unknown and unpredictable terrain.

A collaborative team of researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT - Newark, N.J.), Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.), George Washington University (Washington, D.C.), Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.), and the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and the University of Konstanz (Konstanz, Germany) has recently discovered that these bridges move on their own from their original building point to create shortcuts across large gaps.

"These bridges change dynamically with the traffic pattern on the trail," says Dr. Christopher Reid, one of the lead authors of the study. "Imagine if the George Washington Bridge between New York City and New Jersey would reposition itself across the river depending on the direction of rush-hour traffic." Now working at the University of Sydney in Australia, Dr. Reid performed the work cited in the study while he was a postdoctoral researcher at NJIT.

More:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/njio-aab112315.php

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Science:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/122843668

[TIME TO PANIC]

1. Humanity can learn a thing or two from those ants.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Right! How would it work for the Army Ants if they tried "every ant for itself?"

Welcome to D.U., Time to Panic.