A. rudis antBEN COULTERAs climate change causes global temperatures to mount, warm-loving Aphaenogaster rudis ants in the Appalachian Mountains have marched skyward into the turf of their cold-adapted cousins Aphaenogaster picea, displacing the latter from its home on the mountain peaks of north Georgia. The findings, published last week (March 21) in Global Change Biology, could spell bad news for the Appalachian plant species that depend on these ant species to disperse their seeds throughout the woodlands.
“Spring ephemeral plants depend on ants to get their seeds out of harm’s way from predators, like rodents, and timing matters with these ant-plant mutualisms,” said Joshua King, an insect ecologist at University of Central Florida who was not involved in the research. “This work is really nice because it integrates a deep knowledge of the plant perspective with what is happening with the ants.”
The investigation began with happenstance when Robert Warren, a biologist at SUNY Buffalo State, was visiting the Georgia Museum of Natural History. Here, he stumbled upon an ant collection made by the evolutionary biologist Ross Crozier in the 1970s. While indexing the genetics of southern Aphaenogaster species, Crozier found that A. rudis dominated the warmer foothills and were never observed ...
