Sahara Desert ant

Taxobox| name = Sahara Desert ant
regnum = Animalia
phylum = Arthropoda
classis = Insecta
ordo = Hymenoptera
subordo = Apocrita
superfamilia = Vespoidea
familia = Formicidae
genus = "Cataglyphis"
species = "C. bicolor"
binomial = "Cataglyphis bicolor"
binomial_authority = Fabricius, 1793

The Sahara Desert ant ("Cataglyphis bicolor") is a desert-dwelling ant of the genus "Cataglyphis". It inhabits the Sahara Desert and is one of the most heat tolerant higher organisms known to date. However, there are at least four other species of "Cataglyphis" living in the Sahara desert [Petrov 1986] , for example "C. bombycinus", "C. savigny", "C. mauritanicus" and "C. fortis" [Heusser & Wehner 2002] .

Background

Sahara desert ants are scavengers. They forage for the corpses of insects and other arthropods which have succumbed to the heat stress of their desert environment.

While no known land animal can live permanently at a temperature over 50°C, Sahara desert ants can sustain a body temperature well above 50°C with surface temperatures of up to 70°C.

This ant ventures far from its burrow in the Sahara desert, which has almost no identifiable features, to find food. While venturing out it periodically takes measurements of its angle in respect to the Sun. By doing this the ant can venture far from its nest in search of food. Because of the blistering heat, it can only do this for about 3–5 minutes/day (the hottest time of the day, when all its predators are in hiding from the sun). When the ant finds a dead insect it then looks at the sun and because of its periodic references to the sun's angle it knows exactly what the shortest route back to the nest is.

This skill, which has also been observed in the behavior of foraging honey bees, is elemental to the survival of this species of ant under the harsh conditions in which it lives.This behavior allows "Cataglyphis" to travel farther from its nest than any other creature that lives in the Sahara, with respect to size.

Footnotes

References

* (1986): Distribution of species of the genus "Cataglyphis" Foerster, 1850 (Formicidae, Hymenoptera) in Yugoslavia. "Arh. biol. nauka" 38: 11-12. [http://www.archive.org/download/ants_10311/10311.pdf PDF]
* (2002): The visual centring response in desert ants, "Cataglyphis fortis". "The Journal of Experimental Biology" 205: 585-590. [http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/205/5/585 Full HTML] - [http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/205/5/585.pdf PDF]
* [http://ufbir.ifas.ufl.edu/Chap21.htm University of Florida Book of Insect Records - Most Heat Tolerant]