In last week’s episode…
But it was pretty awesome to know that our footage of this ant can be used to start the
conversation as to what this mystery ant is, if it’s native, and if it’s a brand new
ant discovery that we the AC Family made together.
I will send this video to an ant taxonomist friend of mine, who studies, identifies, curates,
and gives names to new ant species all the time for Antweb.org in my country, and ask
him for his expert opinion on what he thinks this ant is.
I’ll be sure to update you and let you know what my friend says in a future video!
Until our next eye-opening visit to Antopia, let’s cross our fingers guys and hope for
Meranoplus acfamilius becoming a real species!
Haha!
Thank you for watching and supporting the ants.
It’s ant love forever!
Last week’s video where I proposed we’d made a new ant discovery was a little controversial
within the ant community online.
The video solicited loads of mixed reactions, some really excited about the prospect of
being part of a breakthrough scientific ant discovery, and others on the other end calling
it fake and out right clickbait.
This mixed reaction is totally expected, particularly the latter reaction, as skepticism is an important
and necessary part of science, which is why research publications are peer reviewed and
open to the scientific community to check and verify.
Otherwise, we’d just be believing everything we see and read on the internet, and sharing
fake news which is also not a good thing.
But AC Family, have I got some really cool news to share with you all!
This week, I heard back from my myrmecologist friend and taxonomist for Antweb.org, the
global catalogue tracking all the ant species humans have ever discovered in the world,
about the mystery ant we filmed in last week’s episode, and it turns out, he has confirmed
that we, AC Family, have indeed officially made a breakthrough scientific ant discovery.
I repeat: we’ve all officially made scientific ant history!
Keep on watching until the end, because I’ll be going over everything my myrmecologist
friend said about this gorgeous mystery ant we spotted in my yard, I asked him some questions
about what our next step is now that we’ve made the discovery, why all of this is important
to science, and how rare it is to make novel ant discoveries like ours in the world of
myrmecology.
But before all that, guys, there was one important thing I had to do first!
I had to head back to Antopia, because I wanted to locate our mystery ants’ nest!
Welcome everyone to Antopia, this 3,000 square meter plot of land on which we are currently
building our AC Ant House, the custom home I’m building to house the various pet ant
colonies and exotic beasts featured on this channel.
As you saw in last week’s episode, the second floor is now complete and they’re working
on the roof deck.
I can’t wait for us to move in later this year, and start a new chapter on this channel
in our new Antiverse!
So again, guys don’t forget to subscribe to be part of this new adventure!
But one of the cool new things, I’ve realized over the past few months is that the yard
of our Ant House is actually an amazing universe of wildlife on its own, full of neat hidden
secrets that we gradually uncover more and more, with every expedition through its soils,
our new ant discovery being such a prime example of this unexplored wilderness!
Antopia’s biological profile of living creatures and plants is so diverse and mind-blowing,
I’ve given the yard a name: Antopia.
Antopia’s lush territory is full of thick flourishing vegetation, animals, various insects,
and of course tonnes and tonnes of ants that interact with every life form in the area.
Now, if you’ve been following the Antopia series on this channel, you already know how
epic things get on a microscale.
In fact, there’s nothing micro at all about the epic ant drama happening in the grass,
and among the various armies of ants devouring monitor lizards, frogs, and termites, we also
discovered a Great War of the Ants that is happening right under our noses in the great
lands of Antopia.
Now this Great War of the Ants is important, which you will see in a sec, as it pertains
to our mystery ant we discovered last week.
To recap real quickly for those who are new, before we finally delve into details of our
ant discovery, the great Antopian War is between two major teams of ants: Team Native Ants,
i.e. the ants who’ve been living in these lands for millions of years listed here, and
Team Invasive Ants, the ants who’ve been introduced to these lands via human activities,
listed here, whose sole aim is to conquer Antopia and kill, displace, and outcompete
Team Native Ants.
We here at the channel, don’t particularly want these invasive ants around because invasive
ant species are completely volatile, and can totally disrupt and ruin an ecosystem.
So to help support all creatures living in Antopia, it’s been my mission to help support
Team Native ants to win this Great Antopian War of the Ants, and here, AC Family is where
our new mystery ant comes in.
I was feeding a native colony of Marauder Ants, who by the way need a name, so please
leave your VOTE by hitting LIKE in the pinned comments below for your favourite name for
the marauder ants, as suggested by you guys in last week’s episode, and I spotted a
peculiar ant crawling around nearby.
It was an ant I hadn’t seen before, but I was spellbound by its utter beauty.
I gave it some sweet jelly so I could have a closer look at it.
The mystery ant had these cool long white hairs, I’d never seen before on an ant and
had only seen on these ant-like wingless wasps called velvet wasps.
But this was no velvet wasp.
It had these beautiful spines on its thorax that kind of resembled an ant cape, and two
cute beady eyes on its neatly shaped head.
So I allowed the ant to mosey along on its way after filming it, and posted its photo
in some ant forums online and it was tentatively identified as the species Meranoplus bicolor.
But when I checked Antweb.org to see if Meranoplus bicolor was native to my country or if it
was invasive, because if it was invasive that would NOT be good news, to my surprise, Meranoplus
bicolor was not listed as a species documented in my country, and so this meant one of three
things:
This ant was in fact Meranoplus bicolor and we were the first to discover that they actually
existed in my country and were native.
This ant was in fact Meranoplus bicolor and we were the first to discover that they actually
existed in my country and were invasive, or This ant was not in fact Meranoplus bicolor,
but a brand new, undocumented species of ant that looked close to Meranoplus bicolor.
So, after the video was published, and the uproar of comments elicited a huge discussion
online about the identity of this mystery ant, I sent the episode to the one man I knew
who could tell us once and for all, the truth about our mystery ant in last week’s video.
Dr. David General, top ant biologist, taxonomist, and affiliate curator of Antweb.org and other
ant identification websites specializing in studying ants within my country.
I emailed him and wrote:
“Dear Dr. General,
I and all my subscribers are curious to know whether an ant we filmed this week, may be
a new ant species, a new geographic sighting of Meranoplus bicolor, or something else.
The said ant is filmed in this video.”
I linked the episode, and I couldn’t believe what he wrote back!
“Hello AntsCanada!
Good to hear from you after such a long time!
I thoroughly enjoyed your video of the ants of Antopia, and seeing my friends Brian Fisher,
Corrie Moreau, and Benjamin Blanchard in your video was sweet, as well.
The ant in question is indeed Meranoplus bicolor, a new distributional record for the species,
and a new species record.
Congratulations on your great find!
Now you can begin to understand the enduring motivation of taxonomic work.
It's the "high" of discovering something new, be it a new record or a new species.”
Awesome!
So he felt it wasn’t a new species but it was a new sighting of this ant in my country.
He then requested I send him some specimens to officially verify that these were indeed
Meranoplus bicolor, which made me wonder the following question:
Hi Dr. General,
Great news about the Meranoplus bicolor being reported in this country for the first time.
Our subscribers of the channel, the AC Family, will be thrilled with this news!
But now I’m also wondering: What are the chances that upon examining the ant specimens
we are sending you, that this ant actually turns out to be an undiscovered ant species,
and just closely resembles M. bicolor?
In other words, is it at all possible this is an undiscovered ant species or are you
100% certain it is Meranoplus bicolor based on the video?”
And his response to me was surprising:
“Your ant is very close to Meranoplus bicolor, but it may still be a surprise!
I am reminded of the time (co-myrmecologist) Gary Alpert and I dismissed an ant from Mt.
Isarog as simply Tapinoma melanocephalum (a ghost ant), a cosmopolitan pest ant.
Upon closer examination under the microscope, we found it to belong to an entirely different
subfamily!
The mimicry fooled two ant taxonomists!
The ant turned out to be an undescribed species of Paraparatrechina or Nylanderia.”
And so, guys!
There you have it!
It was still possible that our ant was in fact a new species, and Dr. General needed
to have a look at specimens to review under a microscope to identify.
So, I went back to Antopia, searched high and low for the mystery ant’s nest, found
their nest, placed three workers into test tubes and sent it to Dr. General’s laboratory
for examination.
I am happy to report that at the moment of upload of this video, Dr. David General and
his team are examining the specimens right now, as you guys are watching, to verify the
exact species of our mystery ant, and to let us know if this is indeed Meranoplus bicolor
or a brand new undiscovered species.
I will surely let you guys know exactly what their findings are as soon as I hear back
from their team of myrmecologists and to also let you know where they publicly publish this
new ant discovery we all found in last week’s episode!
Can you imagine that we all contributed to the growing knowledge of ant science and were
a part of ant history!
High five, AC Family, and great job to us!
I continued to ask Dr. General about why knowing the geographical distribution of ants is important
to science and what our particular discovery tells us, as well as how common it is to make
such discoveries in myrmecology, be the discoverers actual scientists or amatuer non-scientist
ant lovers like us, to which he said that we can derive useful information from knowing
the geographic distribution of ant species.
For instance, when an ant species suddenly shows up in a place far from its known native
range, then we humans can assume that it was introduced and is invasive.
However, when an ant is distributed among neighboring countries, then we may assume
that the ant is simply native, which is possibly the case with our mystery ant we discovered
if it is Meranoplus bicolor, because Meranoplus bicolor does exist in other surrounding countries
within the region of the world in which I live.
But again we won’t be able to tell until we get full confirmation as to the species
ID of the specimens Dr. General and his team are now examining.
And guys get this: Dr. General also mentioned that the chances of discovering new ant species
in my country are very high, maybe 40-50%.
Can you imagine that?!
Now prior to our epic ant sighting last week, there were apparently 554 ant species known
to exist in the country.
And so our ant here has officially become ant species #555 on the total number of ant
species ever documented in the country.
What a cool number, right guys!
Now the Harvard guys, as Dr. General calls them, estimated that there may be as many
as 1000 ant species in the country.
So, there are an estimated 445 ant species still to be found, or 445/1000 equalling a
44.5% chance of finding a new ant species.
That is an incredible number!
He also went on to explain that the chances are improved when searching for poorly studied
nocturnal ant species, which have been harder for biologists to spot and study.
Time for us to get a black light and use it in Antopia, AC Family!
Overall, it was extremely exciting to be part of this scientific ant breakthrough, and it
was also awesome to know that ordinary curious ant-lovers like you and I, can make valuable
contributions to science!
And to think, if we keep looking and exploring Antopia, our very backyard, we have a 45-50%
chance of discovering a new ant species!
This is crazy, and I believe this to be the start of a new personal mission of mine for
this channel.
Mark my words, AC Family, if this ant that we filmed last week turns out to be Meranoplus
bicolor, aside from the epicness of putting it on the global scientific ant map, I declare
that one of these days, we will stumble upon a brand new ant species.
This I promise you, and I will continue to send any cool, suspect ant specimens we find
in Antopia to Dr. General and his team, so we could hopefully one day name a species
of ant Acfamilius, after all of us, AC Family!
But meanwhile, now that the samples were being examined by the taxonomic pros, it was now
time for us to have a closer look at our mystery ants here.
I had so many questions, like what were they like, what did they eat, were they friendly
or aggressive, outgoing or shy, and how could we find a queen so we could try keeping these
ants we made ant history with.
I went back to the nest and went in with my lens.
AC Family, did you enjoy today’s episode?
Can you imagine that we made an ant discovery and let’s not forget that we may have even
discovered a new ant species?
I’ll be sure to let you guys know what Dr. General and his team find out, so if you haven’t
yet, do SMASH that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL ICON now, and hit ALL so you get notified
at every upload.
Also don’t forget to hit the LIKE button every single time including now.
It would really mean a lot to me, guys.
Thank you!
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would like to watch random
sneak peek scenes of our unidentified mystery ant at their actual ant nest from our next
episode.
Go check them out!
And guys, be sure to visit AntsCanada.com for all your ant keeping and collecting gear
shipped to you in a special package from our ant-loving facility in the USA, so you can
get the most out of your ant keeping experience.
We ship worldwide and also offer full email support if you need our help!
We also have a helpful forum and ant colony trading marketplace on the site.
Visit AntsCanada.com today.
And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week.
Last week, we asked:
What is your favourite feature of the new mystery ant in today’s episode?
Congratulations to Birth of Art who answered:
My favourite features are her chest which has spikes and how cute she is.
Congratulations Birth of Art, you just won a free Ultimate Ant Keeping Handbook from
our shop!
In this week’s AC Question of the Week we ask:
What would you name our mystery ant if it turns out to be an undiscovered species?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free Ultimate Ant
Keeping Handbook from our shop!
Hope you could subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.
Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video, to help
us keep making more.
It’s ant love forever!