[ExI] an ant for spike :)

[MB]

It's not your ants, but  it's new to us, old, and different. :)

Regards,
MB

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080916_ant

“Relic” ant said to hail from lost past

Sept. 16, 2008
Courtesy University of Texas at Austin
and World Science staff

A bi­zarre pred­a­to­ry, blind, un­der­ground ant spe­cies dis­cov­ered in the
Am­a­zon rain­for­est is probably de­scended al­most straight from the first ants,
re­search­ers say.

The in­sect was un­earthed by ev­o­lu­tion­ary bi­olo­g­ist Chris­tian Ra­bel­ing of
the Uni­ver­s­ity of Tex­as at Aus­tin, ac­cord­ing to sci­en­tists.

Martialis heureka (Cour­tesy C. Rabe­ling, U. Tex­as at Aus­tin)
The ant is named Mar­tialis heureka, which trans­lates roughly to “ant from Mars,”
be­cause of its nev­er-be­fore-rec­orded com­bina­t­ion of traits. It lives in soil,
is two to three mil­lime­ters long, pale, and has no eyes and large jaws.

Scientists have classi­fied the crea­ture in its own new sub­fam­i­ly, one of 21 ant
sub­fam­i­lies. This is the first time that a new sub­family of ants with liv­ing
mem­bers has been dis­cov­ered since 1923, ac­cord­ing to the in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

“This dis­cov­ery hints at a wealth of spe­cies, pos­sibly of great ev­o­lu­tion­ary
im­por­tance, still hid­den in the soils of the re­main­ing rain­for­ests,” write
Ra­bel­ing and co-authors in a pa­per re­port­ing the find­ing this week in the
jour­nal Pro­ceed­ings of the Na­tional Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.

Ra­bel­ing col­lect­ed what is said to be the only known spec­i­men of the ant
spe­cies in 2003 from leaf-litter at the Em­presa Brasileira de Pesquisa
Agropecuária in Ma­naus, Bra­zil. He and his col­leagues found that the ant was a
new spe­cies, ge­nus and sub­family af­ter struc­tur­al and ge­net­ic anal­y­sis.
Anal­y­sis of DNA from the an­t’s legs con­firmed its po­si­tion at the very base of
the ant ev­o­lu­tion­ary tree, the re­search­ers said.

Ants are be­lieved to have evolved over 120 mil­lion years ago from wasp
an­ces­tors. It’s thought that they evolved quickly in­to many dif­fer­ent
lin­eages, with ants spe­cial­iz­ing to live in soil, leaf-litter or trees, or
be­com­ing gen­er­al­ists. “This dis­cov­ery lends sup­port to the idea that blind
sub­ter­ra­ne­an pred­a­tor ants arose at the dawn of ant ev­o­lu­tion,” said
Ra­bel­ing.

Ra­bel­ing does­n’t sug­gest that the an­ces­tor to all ants was this way, but that
these adapta­t­ions arose early and have per­sisted. “Based on our da­ta and the
fos­sil rec­ord, we as­sume that the an­ces­tor of this ant was some­what wasp-like,
per­haps si­m­i­lar to the Cre­ta­ceous am­ber fos­sil Sphe­co­myr­ma, which is
widely known as the ev­o­lu­tion­ary mis­sing link be­tween wasps and ants,” said
Ra­bel­ing.

He spec­u­lat­ed that the new ant spe­cies evolved adapta­t­ions over time to its
un­der­ground habi­tat—for ex­am­ple, loss of eyes and pale col­or—while re­tain­ing
some of its an­ces­tors’ char­ac­ter­is­tics. “The new ant spe­cies is hid­den in
en­vi­ron­men­tally sta­ble trop­i­cal soils with po­ten­tially less com­pe­ti­tion
from oth­er ants and in a rel­a­tively sta­ble mi­cro­cli­mate,” he said. “It could
rep­re­sent a ‘re­lict’ spe­cies.”

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