The perfect storm for the annual ant bacchanalia
THE week is upon us when, like a biblical plague, the flying ants swarm in. You’ll have spotted them at Wimbledon, flitting around the ball boys and buzzing with gay abandon up Jo-wilfried Tsonga’s nostrils.
Or you may have noticed them emerging from in between the garden paving slabs and floating into the summer sky like paper lanterns.
A colleague confesses when she saw this phenomenon in her own back garden she nearly put the kettle on to douse the ants in scalding water before coming to her senses and leaving them to their business.
And that is the necessary and frantic business of copulation. The ants are embarking on what is delicately termed a “nuptial flight” to take the first step in founding new colonies.
Queens mate with males on the wing before burrowing back into the soil to establish their new kingdoms. Their job done, the hapless males die shortly after mating. Queens, on the other hand, can live for up to 15 years.
Scientists are yet to pick apart the exact mechanics of this ritual and the Royal Society of Biology is attempting to pinpoint where ants hatch in different parts of the country. But what we do know is the weather is crucial. The ants collectively pick their moment by sensing temperature, humidity and hours of daylight.
Italian biologists have published a study on the nuptial flights of seedharvester ants, which found that the ants did not only require heat to swarm but also preferred to do so within a few days of the last downpour. The sultry near tropical conditions of recent days are perfect.
This annual ant bacchanalia makes me question what would be the ideal weather conditions us humans would choose if we were only to mate once a year? Certainly not these sticky, sweaty days – where even a clammy handshake is really quite enough.