Rob Higgins has a fascination for ants whether they’re vampire, zombie, or European fire ants like the one pictured above and at the bottom of this article. Sean McCann photo.
Biological Sciences faculty member Dr. Rob Higgins has zombies and vampires on his mind, though his are of the ant variety.
Ants?
Higgins, an ant expert whose specialty is invasive European fire ants, reveals there’s a BC ant that recently became a zombie, and another ant that lives as a vampire.
Zombie ants get their name from a parasitic fungus called Pandora that takes over the ant’s brain. Once infected, the zombie ant climbs vegetation, bites firmly at the highest point, and then dies, enabling the fungus to spread by casting its spores through the area and infecting more ants.
Rob Higgins
Higgins discovered a zombie ant in Williams Lake, BC this June. It’s the first time the Pandora fungus has been seen in Canadian ants and possibly a new type of the fungus, preying on the Formica podzolica ant.
Vampire ants (Stigmatomma oregonense), also called Dracula ants, survive entirely on blood from their own young. While the adults of other species of ants sometimes get around their inability to eat solid food by consuming the regurgitations of their larvae, the Dracula larvae don’t regurgitate, so the adults eat by draining their blood.
“The vampire ants are a fascinating group to study because they are most closely related to the evolutionary stem group of ants,” says Higgins. “It is possible that the first ants to evolve were vampire ants.”
This summer Higgins received a one-time $100,000 grant from the BC Inter-Ministry Invasive Species Working Group to help develop ways to control European fire ants, which are becoming a problem in the Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley, and southern part of Vancouver Island.
Fire ants thrive in moist areas like irrigated lawns and gardens, and when a nest is disturbed, often swarm and sting. Yards and parks can become unusable as a result, because of safety concerns for people and pets.
“We are still examining control at a fairly coarse level, quickly trying to assess the viability of different approaches,” says Higgins. “Failures have been much more common than successes but we have seen one approach working well when dealing with these ants in small areas.”
Where most of us might see a nuisance, Higgins sees an ingenious group of creatures. “Ants are one of the most successful groups of animals on the planet. Their social structure and high competition with other ants has made them brutally efficient,” he says.
A closeup of two European fire ants.
“It has been argued that humans are more ecologically related to ants than any other organism as we both live in large cities and must contend with many of the same issues that arise from managing large populations.”
He says whether they’re vampire, zombie, European fire or other ants—an estimated 20,000 species exist worldwide—they have a role to play in the world.
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