Scientific Serendipity Leads to Ellison's Discovery of an Ant New to Massachusetts

In 1998, Aaron Ellison, Fisher Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, conducted an intensive sampling of insects at Hawley Bog in northwestern Massachusetts. This study was aimed at helping him better understand the nutrient uptake of pitcher plants and how these carnivorous plants could be expected to respond to acid rain. The most common prey item captured by this carnivorous plant is the ant.

After collecting ants in the bog, Ellison sent about eighty of the insects for identification to Stefan Cover, associate curator of ants at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, and to Nicholas Gotelli, an ecologist at the University of Vermont. After noting the unusual shape of the ants' antennae and microscopic anatomical characteristics, Cover and Gotelli felt that some of the insects were a new record (scientific terminology for the first known occurrence) for Massachusetts, and possibly the eastern United States, but he could not say for sure.

The ants were then sent to Andre Francoeur, director of the Center for Biodiversity at the University of Quebec, who is the world's expert on this group of ants. Francoeur recently identified this ant as a member of the species Myrmica lobifrons. Because the genus Myrmica has not been thoroughly studied, except by Francouer, other collections of this species have not been accurately identified. As a result, its distribution in the United States is unknown, although it is likely to be common in bogs throughout the northern United States. Ellison and Gotelli have collected it from twenty-two bogs--ranging from northern Vermont through Massachusetts and into northwestern Connecticut. This ant species is common in bogs in Quebec, according to Francoeur. It builds its nests in sphagnum moss.

photo by Marian Rice