Earth & Sky

City ants take heat better than country cousins

Don’t expect picnics without ants in the city parks of Earth’s warmer future. Research suggests that city ants adapt quickly to warming.

Michael Angiletta of Indiana State University led a research team in an effort to learn how well organisms might be able to adapt to a warmer environment. They compared leaf cutter ants from the hot city center of São Paolo, Brazil with the same species of ant from nearby cooler rural areas.

Both the city and the rural ants were put in a room where the heat was turned up to 108 degrees Fahrenheit. The city ants survived 20 percent longer. The question that the researchers can’t yet answer is whether these urban ants – that live a short distance from their rural cousins – are actually evolving to cope with their warmer environment or have acclimatized to take the heat.

Either way, they say that – because cities are ahead of the rest of our planet when it comes to warming – studies like this one give researchers a glimpse of changes that might occur with other species as Earth gets hotter. The team now plans to continue the study.

They’ll use maps made from satellite data to identify possible sites for future experiments about the potential effects of urban warming on Earth’s creatures.

Our thanks today to NASA: explore, discover, understand.