Tropical ants in Europe
Thursday, October 8, 2015 - 09:30
in Biology & Nature
"Imagine I could send an ecologist to Europe back tens of millions of years ago. Then, ask them to look at the ants and to tell me where they think they have landed… They would say Southeast Asia", explains Prof. Evan Economo of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST). His team compared a database of modern ants with a database of fossil ants. The analysis has shown in which locations fossilized ants are more related to the ants now living in the same area of the world. Interestingly, ants which lived in Europe 45 to 10 million years ago were more similar to modern ants now living in South East Asia than their European counterparts. The study has been published in the Journal of Biogeography.