Talk:Yellow crazy ant

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The Yellow Crazy Ant's supercolonies reminds me about the news reports about the one in spain and the reasoning how it could be possible. Report about super ant colony in spain from BCC news Super ant colony ant in spain (google search An example from the BBC article: The supercolonies possibly form because the ants are related and so excrete the same feromones and thus can form huge colonies. Conclucsion that I take is that the Crazy Ants colonies formed from just a few queens
 * Yes, judging from the fact that this is an accidentally introduced species, supercolonies are probably an example of the founder effect. The same principle is thought to be responsible for supercolonies of ants in Australia and wasps in new Zealand.  I've edited the article accordingly to remove the term 'adapted'. --Townmouse 23:09, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Evidently not a founder effect. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/04/0418_020418_TVantcolony_2.html 'A possible explanation was that the entire supercolony arose from a very small number of founders, which would mean that the ants within the colony are genetically very similar—hence their surprising tolerance of ants from distant nests. But this did not prove to be true. A genetic analysis done by Keller's team revealed that the European Argentine ants are a diverse lot. "It's a very nice piece of work," says Kenneth Ross, an entomologist from the University of Georgia, in Athens. "Keller and his colleagues collected a huge number of samples, tested many genetic markers and proved that this tolerance is not due to these ants being closely related."' Davidweman 00:15, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

merged from Crazy Ant
Both referred to the same species. Merged to the article with the more specific name. Shyamal 03:38, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

redirect and possible note for inclusion
these ants which are rampaging through TX, USA right now recently shorted out a circuit board at some science center. Some worry about HOuston space center.

SHould we include that if I can find the source and stuff?

Also how about a "crazy ants" redirect.

Size?
Mention how big they are. Also be consistant with upper/lower case: don't say Crazy Ant, or Crazy ant, probably. Jidanni 23:58, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

We now have: "is a relatively large, yellow to orange ant". Does relatively large mean 3mm, 6mm, 11mm...?173.180.149.41 (talk) 08:12, 24 May 2017 (UTC)(just some wiki reader...)

End Area
The Commons template the the categories box looks funny. For example, the categories box, has more space at the top then at the bottom, counting from the top of the text and teh bottom of the text, respectivly. If you can't fix it, you have to make a post in bugzilla.68.148.164.166 (talk) 08:24, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Mass per ant
The article says: 2,254 foraging ants per m2 with a biomass of 1.85 g per m2. 1.85 grams seems mighty low -- does this mean each ant weighs on average less than a milligram? GAdam (talk) 02:43, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know any actual figures but that would make sense. They're pretty small.  KarlM (talk) 08:03, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Clarification needed
Not sure what this means: "The enemy release hypothesis, suggests that escape from co-evolved natural enemies may help organisms achieve a large colonial size." Does this mean natural enemies from its original habitat that are absent from the new habitat? The sentence needs to be clarified. In particular the word "escape" seems to be an unfortunate word choice, but perhaps it is a technical usage?

Also, it's noted twice in the article that "A. gracilipes was accidentally introduced to Christmas Island between 1915 and 1934." I presume "accidentally introduced" means inadvertently by human beings. I'd be interested to know how we know this as, according to the article, we don't even know the ant's original habitat.JKeck (talk) 22:30, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I reworded the sentence to make it clearer. On the second point, it's known because there were definitely no ants before 1915 and they were there after 1934; it doesn't matter where exactly they came from.  It's a widespread tramp species all over the tropics, so it probably came to Christmas Island from another place it's not native to.  KarlM (talk) 06:20, 3 October 2009 (UTC)