That animal is the big-headed ant. In Kenya’s Laikipia County, where Kamaru and his colleagues have been gathering data, the ants establish supercolonies at the base of whistling-thorn acacias, then scamper up the trunks to prey on native acacia ants, slaughtering the adults and feasting on their larvae and eggs until the entire community is gone. This is where the domino effect of trouble starts.
The big-headed ants’ coup disrupts a tight symbiosis, in which the trees furnish the native ants with food and shelter in exchange for defense. “We call them bodyguards,” Jacob Goheen, Kamaru’s supervisor at the University of Wyoming, told me. The main threat the native ants waylay is elephants—which, given the chance, will so aggressively chow down on trees that they end up stripped bare, even toppled, struggling to resprout. But the mere presence of native acacia ants is usually enough to keep whistling thorns upright: When elephant trunks snake into the trees’ branches, the insects zoom straight in, nipping at the flesh of their nostrils until the herbivores flee.
How One Tiny Insect Upended an Ecosystem
Tiny ant species disrupts lion’s hunting behavior (phys.org)
Bad ants wipe out good ants, elephants kill trees, no trees prevents lions killing zebras and the ecosystem suffers.
Wow, I knew nothing about this and it sounds bad.
Pheidole megacephala is a species of ant in the family Formicidae. It is commonly known as the big-headed ant in the US and the coastal brown ant in Australia. It is a very successful invasive species and is considered a danger to native ants in Australia[2] and other places. It is regarded as one of the world’s worst invasive ant species.[3]
Scientists have carried out the first successful in vitro fertilization of a southern white rhino, a major breakthrough that could pave the way to saving its highly endangered northern cousin.
IVF breakthrough could revive nearly extinct rhino species
They claim this as a big hope but when you reach this stage it is mostly over.
200 years into industrialization and the biosphere is cut to pieces. What will the next 200 do?