Post AxC4GPpNPVEZ0WvRq4 by khleedril@cyberplace.social
(DIR) More posts by khleedril@cyberplace.social
(DIR) Post #AxBzyslwelSjkThkLw by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-08-15T11:32:59Z
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Hey bug-lovers. A great new ant video just dropped from SyneAnts. He's just getting his channel going and the video has only 3 views. Why not stop by and say hi?#ants #insects #bugs #cute #CuteAnimals #antArmy #videos #youTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOYJxOfMNkw
(DIR) Post #AxC2xGBMwmtpdYVxVA by Gorfram@beige.party
2025-08-15T12:06:16Z
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@futurebird "Endless Queens" is, of course, the name of my new drag troupe.
(DIR) Post #AxC3nxofxiXG1X1yqG by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-08-15T12:15:51Z
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If New Zealand is a group of isolated island with only a few ants at the start of the adaptive radiation process then Borneo is the opposite. Borneo is the location of maximal ant species diversity globally, while it's also an island the ants of Borneo can be found in surrounding islands and on nearby continents. What conditions lead to high species diversity for ants? If we looked into the past were there other locations that might have had even greater diversity?
(DIR) Post #AxC4GPpNPVEZ0WvRq4 by khleedril@cyberplace.social
2025-08-15T12:20:56Z
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@futurebird It depends on whether they can swim or not.
(DIR) Post #AxC8xZ912vX2AhwW3c by llewelly@sauropods.win
2025-08-15T13:13:36Z
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@futurebird 1/3my amatuer guess:during the major glaciations of the Pleistocene, Borneo would have been connected with the asian mainland, as well as with most of the rest of the indonesian archipelago, due to lower sea levels. There were several of these major glaciation events, and each would have lasted about 110,000 years. Think of it: lower sea levels enable many asian ant lineages to expand into Borneo.
(DIR) Post #AxC9z10X2MG8pcEI0e by llewelly@sauropods.win
2025-08-15T13:13:51Z
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@futurebird 2/3Then, ice sheets shrink, sea level rises, and Borneo ants are isolated, evolving separately from mainland lineages for 10,000 to 25,000 years. This cycle repeats several times. Each repetition increases ant diversity. And it takes place in a warm, rainy environment (Borneo is right under the intertropical convergence zone), with steep mountains and volcanically enriched soils.
(DIR) Post #AxC9z2IeEULQq5iGsy by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-08-15T13:25:03Z
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@llewelly I'm interested in that repetition and how it could, given repeated isolation and regrouping lead to greater species diversity.THIS is starting to sound like a fun problem to model with a simulation. You have automata with a set of genes and they can breed and recombine. Those that better match their environmental patch are more successful at this. Hmmm.
(DIR) Post #AxC9z8Lhk2M3bJBnU0 by llewelly@sauropods.win
2025-08-15T13:14:07Z
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@futurebird 3/3(The volcanoes are all on other indonesian islands, such as Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi, but they're highly capable of throwing plenty of ash to Borneo.)oops, got so busy thinking about Borneo I forgot to extend this to answer your actual question.
(DIR) Post #AxCAYemR9g80JsdErg by llewelly@sauropods.win
2025-08-15T13:31:31Z
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@futurebird I think sea level change as a species pump is a common idea in Pleistocene and Pliocene biogeography, so I'm guessing there's already a lot of research on it, but so far I'm only finding paywalled papers like this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1055790317306802
(DIR) Post #AxCMLBDOxtPYJJaJ04 by pencilears@mastodon.eternalaugust.com
2025-08-15T15:43:27Z
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@futurebird I think I was taught that the place where you see the most diversity of a thing is the place it's probably from.So like, the English language is about the same from Washington to California, but if you go to England there's *a lot* more diversity of accents per square mile, because it's been mutating the longest in England.