The anthill mob

The anthill mob
09 April 2005

From New Scientist Print Edition.

On a recent summer trip to Ushuaia in Patagonia, Argentina, we saw no ants. This troubled us so much that we ended up actively searching them out, with no success.
Is there a southern - and indeed a northern - limit to the range of ants or were we just looking in the wrong places?

Andrew and Bronwyn Lumsden, Murrays Run, New South Wales, Australia
From issue 2494 of New Scientist magazine, 09 April 2005, page 81\

In searching around Ushuaia, the questioners found one of the few places on land where ants do not occur naturally, although there is the possibility that adventive species - that is, non-native and non-established ants - survive in houses. It's just too cold and wet there. Other places where you can look in vain are Antarctica, the sub-Antarctic islands (although an adventive species was found once in an abandoned whaler's hut on Kerguelen), the Falkland Islands, the high Arctic, Iceland and the upper slopes of high mountains.

Edward O. Wilson, Department of Entomology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US

From issue 2678 of New Scientist magazine, 15 October 2008, page 81