Science news report: Ants survive floods by forming rafts

Ants survive floods by forming rafts out of young

When the need arises, ants that live in flooded areas link their bodies together to form buoyant rafts that protect the queen and much of her brood. Now, scientists have figured out how they do it.

The researchers collected ants from a flood plain in Switzerland and exposed them to flooding in a laboratory. Writing in the journal PLOS One, they reported that the queen was given a place at the center of the raft, while the larvae and pupae formed the raft’s base.

“We were surprised to see the youngest members on the bottom,” said Jessica Purcell, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Worker ants are dispersed throughout the raft and form a dome atop the base and around the queen. This position allows them to recover quickly once the colony emerges from the flood so they can aid the queen and the brood.

Kestrel adapts to loss by living fast, dying young

Native forest now makes up only 2 percent of the land area of Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean. So a rare bird called the Mauritius kestrel has been forced to nest in sugarcane fields.



That the birds are resilient despite changes in their habitat is a good sign, she said. Kestrels have been through some troubling times.

— New York Times