The weight of all ants on Earth is roughly equal to the weight of all humans- aka there are a lot of ants. And can be found everywhere mammals are able to live. So they make sense as a food source
ants_everywhere•3h ago
> aka there are a lot of ants
This is true
nvader•2h ago
And easier to predate on at scale than humans.
ants_everywhere•1h ago
I was thinking maybe that's why the evolved stingers, but it turns out ants evolved from stinging wasps not vice versa.
PNewling•1h ago
Your username makes me think you'd be a good person to ask:
Sorry, what? (Edit, this sounds like I don't believe you, but it is more that I am in disbelief!) Ants evolved from stinging wasps? Were they flying at that time? Or were wasps at some point non-flying and the 'wasps' grouping is a wide one like 'beetles' is?
This is such a fascinating space I know very little about.
tamad•46m ago
I don’t know the answer to your questions off the top of my head, unfortunately, but they are most certainly answered in The Ants by E.O. Wilson. It’s a fascinating and artfully written book. I unfortunately gave my copy to a student, or I’d have found the relevant passage for you. (The biomass fact mentioned in a parent comment is mentioned in the book as well.)
ants_everywhere•33m ago
Yeah I was surprised too! I don't actually know that much about ants or biology, but
- (1) ants fly!
well they don't usually fly, but they spread wings and fly during a "nuptual flight" to start new colonies [0]. I only learned this a few years ago when I moved into the woods and mass migrations of flying ants often.
From what I can see, all wasps fly, and I can't find anything saying their common ancestor couldn't fly. So since ants can partially fly, I think it's much more likely they evolved from a flying ancestor. They just lost lost the ability to fly most of the time and totally dominated the land niche.
Incidentally, living in the woods has also taught me that there are a variety of wasps that live underground like ants do. I used to think they all built open-air hives.
- (2) I made that comment mostly based on a paper [1] I found while googling around. According to the paper:
> The stinging wasps (Hymenoptera: Aculeata) are an extremely diverse lineage of hymenopteran insects, encompassing over 70,000 described species.... The most well-studied lineages of Aculeata are the ants... and the bees
This is consistent with what I've seen on Wikipedia. Basically ants, bees, and wasps are very closely related. The Wikipedia page on Aculeata [2] has a nice family tree that includes sawflies, bees, and wasps.
So yes, wasps is wide like beetles. But there are more beetles. Beetles get their own order, whereas stinging wasps, bees, and ants have an "infraorder", which I guess is like an order but smaller. The Wikipedia article on Hymenoptera has a family tree that shows the relationship with beetles [3].
Trees really aren't a good example of convergent evolution. The evidence tends more toward "all plants have woodiness genes, and sometimes those genes can be activated/deactivated".
Fruits are, though.
anticensor•1h ago
And then you have trenacisation for transportation systems.
bokchop•2h ago
I can see the shear abundance of ants tilting the scale of evolution's nonlinearity.
Reminds me of Mitch Hedberg, ~"[Ants are] great if you're ever really hungry and want to eat 2000 of something."
hammock•3h ago
ants_everywhere•3h ago
This is true
nvader•2h ago
ants_everywhere•1h ago
PNewling•1h ago
Sorry, what? (Edit, this sounds like I don't believe you, but it is more that I am in disbelief!) Ants evolved from stinging wasps? Were they flying at that time? Or were wasps at some point non-flying and the 'wasps' grouping is a wide one like 'beetles' is?
This is such a fascinating space I know very little about.
tamad•46m ago
ants_everywhere•33m ago
- (1) ants fly!
well they don't usually fly, but they spread wings and fly during a "nuptual flight" to start new colonies [0]. I only learned this a few years ago when I moved into the woods and mass migrations of flying ants often.
From what I can see, all wasps fly, and I can't find anything saying their common ancestor couldn't fly. So since ants can partially fly, I think it's much more likely they evolved from a flying ancestor. They just lost lost the ability to fly most of the time and totally dominated the land niche.
Incidentally, living in the woods has also taught me that there are a variety of wasps that live underground like ants do. I used to think they all built open-air hives.
- (2) I made that comment mostly based on a paper [1] I found while googling around. According to the paper:
> The stinging wasps (Hymenoptera: Aculeata) are an extremely diverse lineage of hymenopteran insects, encompassing over 70,000 described species.... The most well-studied lineages of Aculeata are the ants... and the bees
This is consistent with what I've seen on Wikipedia. Basically ants, bees, and wasps are very closely related. The Wikipedia page on Aculeata [2] has a nice family tree that includes sawflies, bees, and wasps.
So yes, wasps is wide like beetles. But there are more beetles. Beetles get their own order, whereas stinging wasps, bees, and ants have an "infraorder", which I guess is like an order but smaller. The Wikipedia article on Hymenoptera has a family tree that shows the relationship with beetles [3].
[0] https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/when-why-winged-ants-swarm-nu...
[1] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aculeata
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenoptera