photo © Alex Wild (http://www.myrmecos.net)

The ants haven’t come down with their iron feelers yet, but they are better organized and will soon have the entire planet under their domain.  It won’t be long before they strike.

Ant colonies are more often than not part of a super colony since new colonies are formed after a queen leaves to form a new colony.  These colonies then share genetic traits and do not attack each other because they smell alike.  I believe eventually the genetic differences will become enough that colonies will no longer smell similar, but who knows when that will be.

One of the largest, if not the largest, super colony is in Europe.  There is a super colony of Argentine ants that stretchs over 3,700 miles from the Atlantic coast of Spain down Portugal along the southern part of Spain and France and into northern Italy.  But there are also two other Argentine ant super colonies of very large size.  One in California that reaches over 560 miles and one on the west coast of Japan.

Recently it has been determined that these three super colonies (Europe, California, and Japan) are actually part of the same mega-colony.  When ants from the three super colonies were put together, they did not fight and acted more like seeing old friends. 

The best part?  We most likely created this mega-colony by initially transporting the ants around the world and then continually introducing ants from the three location to each other thus allowing the members of the mega-colony to stay familiar with each other.

So be prepared.  Our new ant overlords will soon be taking over.