The Hive: The Malthus Bug Thread

[Ideologue]

Well, I guess we just have to nuke Macedonia.

[Malthus]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10774628/Snake-eats-centipede-that-fought-back.html

Snake eats centipede that fought back
A snake found by scientists in Macedonia had a meal that bit back as a centipede ate its way through the predator's stomach



By Olivia Yallop

10:08AM BST 18 Apr 2014

Comments10 Comments

Reptile researchers on the island of Golem Grad in Lake Prespa, Macedonia were amazed to discover the remains of a horn-nosed viper which had died when its prey – a huge centipede - clawed its way out of the predator's stomach.

Nose-horned vipers regularly consume small mammals, lizards and birds. The snake, a young female, was about 2 inches longer than the centipede, but "gravely underestimated" the strength of its prey. The centipede, of the Megarian Banded variety, is a highly aggressive species armed with mild venom and found throughout Southen Europe. The arthopod in question weighed 114 per cent of the snake's total body weight.

The two carcasses were found together, with the centipede's head sticking out of the snake's ruptured abdomen.

"All of us were astonished, as nobody has ever seen something like this," said Ljiljana Tomovi, a herpetologist at the University of Belgrade.

"The entire volume of its body was occupied by the centipede."

A study was published in the journal Ecologica Montenegrina.

"In general, this invertebrate is extremely tough: It is very hard to kill a full-grown Scolopendra (personal observation)," the authors of the study wrote. "Therefore, we cannot dismiss the possibility that the snake had swallowed the centipede alive, and that, paradoxically, the prey has eaten its way through the snake, almost reaching its freedom."

Okay, now that is gross. 

[Malthus]

The Argentine Ant "supercolony" is taking over whole continents:

http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/04/13/beheco.ars043.full?sid=8eb4e726-93bc-48a9-ad8f-bd8c423b0278

Argentine ants form exceptionally massive colonies—supercolonies. This occurs because the queens stay in their natal colony, so all their progeny add to the colony's population. By budding—when the workers and queens move together to new sites, making colonies extremely polydomous (having multiple nests: Debout et al. 2007)—each colony can expand its territory as far as environmental conditions allow. Examples of limiting conditions include the availability of suitable nest sites and the presence of competing colonies that could hem the colony in. Linepithema humile is native to the region around northern Argentina (Wild 2004), where colonies span just hundreds of meters. But where the Argentine ant has invaded elsewhere by jump dispersal (movements over a distance, invariably piggybacking on human transport), its generalist diet and flexible nest habitats, coupled with a lack of effective competitors, has contributed to its status as one of the most damaging invasive species (Lowe et al. 2004), by permitting single colonies to leapfrog continents and grow across hundreds of square kilometers (Vogel et al. 2010; van Wilgenburg et al. 2010).

Indeed, the invasive colonies of Argentine ants are the largest recorded societies of multicellular organisms. Among the supercolonies of this species spreading globally, Large Supercolony (as it is known in California, where it might contain a trillion individuals: Moffett 2010) is the champion, spanning 1000 km from San Francisco to the Mexican border in California, 6000 km in Europe, 2800 km in Australia, 900 km on the North Island of New Zealand, and ever-widening regions of Hawaii and Japan (Giraud et al. 2002; Vogel et al. 2010; van Wilgenburg et al. 2010). Carry an Argentine ant worker, queen, or male within or between any of these regions and it merges with the ants living there with at most a subtle initial pause to inspect them (Björkman-Chiswell et al. 2008). It joins the local labor force without a hitch because it is still home, in a sense—Large Supercolony controls the entire expanse.

Three other Argentine ant colonies vie with the Large Supercolony for the land near San Diego, however. They collide along centimeters-wide borders that extend for kilometers: each month, more than a million ants die in battles between 2 of the colonies alone (Thomas et al. 2007). It is a death sentence for an ant to move just beyond its colony's territory onto ground controlled by one of these competitors (Figure 1). The same would be true if that ant came upon a fledgling Argentine ant colony offloaded from a ship from Argentina. In short, at no stage in colony growth is there ambiguity as to the limits of the colony unit. The ants show a universal lack of social strain or dysfunction toward other colony members, and a clear attack response to outsiders, even after their colony range has expanded across continents.

[The Brain]

There is much to be learnt from beasts.

[Malthus]

Largest ever aquatic insect discovered:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/2014/07/22/largest-aquatic-insect-in-the-world-found-in-china/

Check out the mandibles on that one! 

[Berkut]

The Argentine Ant "supercolony" is taking over whole continents:

http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/04/13/beheco.ars043.full?sid=8eb4e726-93bc-48a9-ad8f-bd8c423b0278

Argentine ants form exceptionally massive colonies—supercolonies. This occurs because the queens stay in their natal colony, so all their progeny add to the colony's population. By budding—when the workers and queens move together to new sites, making colonies extremely polydomous (having multiple nests: Debout et al. 2007)—each colony can expand its territory as far as environmental conditions allow. Examples of limiting conditions include the availability of suitable nest sites and the presence of competing colonies that could hem the colony in. Linepithema humile is native to the region around northern Argentina (Wild 2004), where colonies span just hundreds of meters. But where the Argentine ant has invaded elsewhere by jump dispersal (movements over a distance, invariably piggybacking on human transport), its generalist diet and flexible nest habitats, coupled with a lack of effective competitors, has contributed to its status as one of the most damaging invasive species (Lowe et al. 2004), by permitting single colonies to leapfrog continents and grow across hundreds of square kilometers (Vogel et al. 2010; van Wilgenburg et al. 2010).

Indeed, the invasive colonies of Argentine ants are the largest recorded societies of multicellular organisms. Among the supercolonies of this species spreading globally, Large Supercolony (as it is known in California, where it might contain a trillion individuals: Moffett 2010) is the champion, spanning 1000 km from San Francisco to the Mexican border in California, 6000 km in Europe, 2800 km in Australia, 900 km on the North Island of New Zealand, and ever-widening regions of Hawaii and Japan (Giraud et al. 2002; Vogel et al. 2010; van Wilgenburg et al. 2010). Carry an Argentine ant worker, queen, or male within or between any of these regions and it merges with the ants living there with at most a subtle initial pause to inspect them (Björkman-Chiswell et al. 2008). It joins the local labor force without a hitch because it is still home, in a sense—Large Supercolony controls the entire expanse.

Three other Argentine ant colonies vie with the Large Supercolony for the land near San Diego, however. They collide along centimeters-wide borders that extend for kilometers: each month, more than a million ants die in battles between 2 of the colonies alone (Thomas et al. 2007). It is a death sentence for an ant to move just beyond its colony's territory onto ground controlled by one of these competitors (Figure 1). The same would be true if that ant came upon a fledgling Argentine ant colony offloaded from a ship from Argentina. In short, at no stage in colony growth is there ambiguity as to the limits of the colony unit. The ants show a universal lack of social strain or dysfunction toward other colony members, and a clear attack response to outsiders, even after their colony range has expanded across continents.

That is just fucking cool.

[PRC]

And the ants shall inherit the earth.

[Malthus]

Okay this is the grossest:

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/doctors-pull-live-cricket-out-mans-ear#

[Martinus]

Linepithema humile

Means "humble ant" in Latin. Perhaps that's what Jesus meant when he said the meek and humble shall inherit the earth. 

[garbon]

http://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/spiders-force-family-upscale-missouri-home-26106285

Thousands of Venomous Spiders Force Family from Home

A family was driven from their suburban St. Louis home by thousands of venomous spiders that fell from the ceiling and oozed from the walls.

Brian and Susan Trost bought the $450,000 home overlooking two golf holes at Whitmoor Country Club in Weldon Spring in October 2007 and soon afterward started seeing brown recluse spiders everywhere, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported . Once when showering, Susan Trost dodged a spider as it fell from the ceiling and washed down the drain.

She told St. Louis television station KMOV-TV in 2012 the spiders "started bleeding out of the walls," and at least two pest control companies were unable to eradicate the infestation.

The couple filed a claim in 2008 with their insurance company, State Farm, and a lawsuit against the home's previous owners for not disclosing the brown recluse problem.

At a civil trial in St. Charles County in October 2011, University of Kansas biology professor Jamel Sandidge — considered one of the nation's leading brown recluse researchers — estimated there were between 4,500 and 6,000 spiders in the home. Making matters worse, he said, those calculations were made in the winter when the spiders are least active.

The jury awarded the couple slightly more than $472,000, but the former owners declared bankruptcy, the insurance company still didn't pay anything and the couple moved out two years ago.

The home, now owned by the Federal National Mortgage Association, was covered with nine tarps this week and workers filled it with a gas that permeated the walls to kill the spiders and their eggs.

"There'll be nothing alive in there after this," said Tim McCarthy, president of the company hired to fix the problem once and for all.

[Syt]

[jimmy olsen]

http://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/spiders-force-family-upscale-missouri-home-26106285

The jury awarded the couple slightly more than $472,000, but the former owners declared bankruptcy, the insurance company still didn't pay anything and the couple moved out two years ago.

[garbon]

A different article noted insurance company claimed house wasn't insured for this sort of issue so they didn't have to pay.

[Malthus]

A different article noted insurance company claimed house wasn't insured for this sort of issue so they didn't have to pay.

My guess is that "house invaded by hordes of poisionous spiders" insurance is pretty uncommon. 

[garbon]

Not bugs but here is fun companion. House infested with garter snakes. That would be rather annoying but I don't imagine it would skeeve me out.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/102-snakes-seeking-sanctuary-slither-into-home-near-regina-1.2806795?cmp=rss