The Botanical Garden holds more than just plants – it is home to many other life forms, and in particular, the diverse array of insects that call the Garden their home. Join Julie Miller for a talk to learn about one such insect, the Argentine Ant, that arrived in California a little over 100 years ago, and established itself along the garden trails. These unsuspecting creatures have a strange social system, not found in their native Argentina, that causes them to form Super-colonies – a single, interconnected colony that spans the length of the state of California! We’ll hear about what has led these tiny black ants to achieve such epic proportions, and what existing theories can tell us about their future. Expanding through the state as a super-colony has been bad news for native ants, and we’ll hear about their impact on California flora and fauna and what you can do to help.
This event is free, please RSVP.
Julie Miller is an NSF post-doctoral fellow in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA. She does her research on the social systems of ants to understand how they cooperate and communicate in groups. She is currently using the Argentine ant in her studies on the evolution of group size.
