Myths often are born out of a conflict – the conflict between our unstoppable urge to explain everything and our inability to do so in all instances alike. When real-world facts defy everything from simple common sense to lateral thinking, we resort to a god or devil to fill in the gaps. And so, pitted against a vegetational quirk that is at odds with Amazon’s ecological traits, Peruvians call it “devil’s gardens”.
These are vast expanses of vegetation that appear at random in western Peru’s Amazonian rainforest. Does that sound diabolic? Well, tropical rainforests as a rule are thickly populated with a strikingly rich assortment of trees, vines, shrubs and wildflowers, but those Peruvian “gardens” are unique. Nearly every item in them belongs to a single plant species — Duroia hirsute. And that is why the local legend has it that these are cultivated by an evil forest spirit.
Obviously nature watchers overlooked a simple factor — the ants called Myrmelachista schumanni, which prefers to nest in D. hirsute stems. They’re the actual “devils”. They control vegetation by choosy pruning or poisoning. They kill other plants to create an exclusive space for the D. hirsute saplings to thrive, which in turn will allow ant colonies to expand in space and time. Devil’s gardens grow by 0.7 percent per year, and the largest tested plot is 807 years old and exactly has 351 plants. Some scientists find “an excellent example of niche construction” in the ant behaviour.
There are as many as 3 million workers (plus 15,000 queens whose presence contributes to colony longevity) to tend a typical garden. What kind of poison do they use? A chemical analysis of the ants’ poison glands show that the only toxic stuff it produces is formic acid, which is so famously common among many ant species (the acid got its names from formica, which is Latin for ant). Treatment of leaves with formic acid had induced leaf necrosis on all the plants tested by researchers.
It appears that the ants bite a hole in the leaves and inject a droplet of formic acid from their abdomens. It reaches every part of the plant, spreading through the vascular system, causing the telltale brownish patches along the veins of the leaves within hours of the assault. So, the devil’s garden ants hold a record. To the best of the knowledge of the research team, this is the first instance of an ant using formic acid for killing plants — although the substance is known to have bactericidal and fungicidal properties.
SNEAK PREVIEW
Cleo as a male pharaoh
A 2050-year old Egyptian stone slab shows Cleopatra as a male pharaoh. The sex change was actually because of the laziness of the artist. Up to 51 BC, Ptolemaios XII, the father of Cleopatra, was king over Egypt. When he died, some of the stelae were already carved. The stone cutter then just added the name of the new sovereign in the cartouche, but he did not change the picture of the male pharaoh into a female because this was too difficult or too much work. But one of Cleopatra’s legs had been recarved. This means someone started to redo the initial image “but then gave up”.
Mobiles map city hotspots
Data from the mobile phones of tens of thousands of voice-animated people are creating a computer-generated image that maps the peaks and valleys of human activity throughout a city. US researchers use such data to offer traffic planners a new way to track congested areas and give emergency workers real-time data. Tourists may go to the most crowded area to see what’s going on, or prefer to visit lonely monuments. Taxi drivers often need to reach hotspots, but they may avoid crowds after dropping off a customer. All will benefit.
QUIZ No.206
1. Works like Ramayana and Mahabharata are …
– Shruti texts
– Samhita texts
– Upaveda texts
– Smriti texts
1. Smriti texts
2. This is where “S=klogW” famously appeared outside of scientific works.
– Berlin Wall
– A tombstone
– An al-Qaeda note
– Buckingham Palace
2. A tombstone (Ludwig Boltzmann’s)
3. Which Nobel-winning author worked with Charlie Chaplin in a Russia-related project during World War II?
– Pearl Buck
– Sinclair Lewis
– Mikhail Sholokhov
– Romain Rolland
3. Pearl Buck (the project was the American Committee for Russian War Relief)
4. Men’s magazine ‘Perfect 10’ plays up women with no history of …
– Tax evasion
– Left-wing politics
– Cosmetic surgery
– Eating disorders
4. Cosmetic surgery
5. Who died with the unrealized dream of staging a multi-media event in the Himalayas?
– Guru Gopinath
– Yehudi Menuhin
– Alexander Scriabin
– Nicholas Roerich
5. Alexander Scriabin