Ants From Every Angle, Across the Globe

Finding Genius Podcast

Richard Jacobs

Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.4 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2021

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Most of us dread the sight of an ant in the kitchen, and might squash it without pause. But what if we knew that a single ant is just one part of an 'individual', that individual being the ant colony as a whole? What if we truly understood the social complexity, diversity, and evolutionary success of ants? What if we knew that an ant queen can live up to 29 years?

Tune in to enter the life of an ant, and discover:

Why ants in warmer environments tend to be pale in color, and ants in colder environments tend to be dark in color, and how this is linked with body size
How certain types of ants use leaves as fertilizer by growing fungus on them, which they feed on
How pitfall trapping is used to collect and study ants from various habitats

Tom Rhys Bishop is an ecologist and Extraordinary Lecturer at University of Pretoria, South Africa, whose research is focused on trying to understand the factors that drive the distribution and diversity of different ant species, both on a small and large scale. His primary field site is in the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains of Southern Africa, where he samples ants up and down the mountain range to determine how and why different types and quantities of ant species live in different locations and habitats along the mountain.

The second component of his research is larger in scale, aimed at uncovering patterns of ant diversity globally—which includes the potential study of all 15,000 species of ant that have been described to date. With a dataset containing incredible details—including leg length, size of mandible, and broadness of shoulders—on about 4,000 of these ant species sampled from every continent, Bishop and other researchers are trying to better understand evolutionary and ecological convergence.

In describing the scope of this research and more, Bishop touches on a number of interesting topics, such as the different caste systems within an ant colony, how colony lifespan differs between species, environmental factors that impact the distribution of ant species, how ants stay warm without much hair, the ecological role of ants, ant colony structure, techniques for trapping ants from their natural environment for study, surprising ant abilities, and more.

For more information about Bishop's research, visit https://www.tomrhysbishop.com/.

Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Transcript

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0:00.0	Forget frequently asked questions common sense common knowledge or Google how about advice from a real genius
0:06.8	95% of people in any profession are good enough to be qualified and licensed 5% go and beyond. They become very good at what they do.
0:15.1	But only 0.1% are real Jesus.
0:18.3	Richard Jacobs has made it his life's mission to find them for you.
0:22.4	He hunts down and interviews geniuses in every field,
0:25.1	sleep science, cancer, stem cells, ketogenic diets, and more. Here come the geniuses.
0:30.3	This is the Finding Genius Podcast.
0:33.0	That is Richard Jacobs.
0:35.0	Hello, this is Richard Jacobs.
0:39.0	I have Tom Reese Pitchup.
0:41.0	He's an ecologist, an extraordinary lecturer, a university of
0:44.2	Pritoria, South Africa. He studies ants, so we're going to talk about his
0:47.4	research and his work. So, Tom, thanks for coming.
0:50.3	Hi, Richard, thanks for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here.
0:53.6	Well, tell me about your work with ants. What got you interested in them and when?
0:58.0	I've been interested in ants for a long time.
1:01.0	You know, I used to have an ant farm when I was young and I used to go and pick up
1:06.9	Ant Queens when they would fly in the summer, bring them back and put them in cups and rear them in the garden and all that kind of stuff.
1:14.3	And I kind of fell out of it for a while and during my school years and into university
1:20.6	I got really interested in genetics. and then I sort of learned that
1:24.1	actually genetics wasn't that interesting and it's actually quite difficult and
1:27.8	I've discovered my love of ants at university I've been studying them ever
	...

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