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| The acorn woodpecker is the only bird that can eat chestnuts and acorns. These birds hide the seeds in the cracks of tree bark. Squirrels will raid the bird's hiding spots and in turn hide the seeds on the ground. Most of the seeds are eventually eaten but a few grow into large chestnut and oak trees. |  |
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The World's Biggest Supercolony of Ants is Under Threat
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Species threatened
The red wood ants live along a strip of shoreline on the Ishikari coast of northern Japan. In the early 1970s when Professor Higashi of Hokkaido University, Japan, first began studying this supercolony of Japanese red wood ants, there were approximately 45,000 connecting nests that extended nearly 20 kilometres along the shore of the Japan Sea. At that time, it was estimated that the colony had 307 million red wood ants, including about 306 million workers and about 1.1 million queens. The colony is thought to be about 1,000 years old. Since 1973 the supercolony has been under siege. The construction of a new port on Ishikari Bay has occurred on top of 30 per cent of the ant megalopolis. This has reduced the number of red wood ants living there by more than half. Researchers from Hokkaido University are analyzing the DNA and genetic structure of the red wood ant supercolony. Results to date indicate that colonies are genetically distant from each other; however, within nests, most nestmates are siblings. Ant behavioral responses in a laboratory setting indicated that queens were initially hesitant to visit foreign colonies for the first 24 hours, but would visit after this time. No hesitation was observed between different nests of the supercolony. Workers displayed antagonistic responses when different colonies were mixed in a box. However, between different nests of the supercolony, there was no antagonistic response in any behaviors. Results will assist the conservation of this truly remarkable and ancient ant colony. The health of the ant population is very important to the health of the surrounding oak forests.
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