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Ants are among the most conspicuous organisms that one encounters in
terrestrial landscapes and they have a profound influence on most
terrestrial plants and animals through their predatory, scavenging
and symbiotic behaviour. Ecologists often need to be able to
identify ants because they are having an impact on the system being
studied. Ants are also often used as biological indicators in
ecological assessments because of the relative ease with which they
can be sampled.
There are probably just over a thousand species of ants in southern
Africa (south of the Kuneni and Zambezi rivers) but only about 550
of them have names. It is relatively easy to identify an ant to
genus level but to species level is difficult, if not impossible,
for the many genera that have not recently received (in the last 50
years) a taxonomic revision.
Our goals are (1) to make it easier for people to identify and
understand the ants of the southern African subcontinent, and (2) to
advance research into their systematics, ecology and biology.
In order to achieve the first goal, we are assembling a website on
southern African ants that enables users to identify the ants and
learn more about them. There are other ant websites around (e.g.
antweb and
The Ants of (sub-Saharan) Africa) but ours will be focused on
southern Africa and making the most of the information that is
available in the Iziko South African Museum’s ant collection, which
is by far the best ant collection for southern African ants. Hence
it will present new information and a new synthesis of what we know
about southern African ants. We are aiming to upload a first version
of this website (which will be integrated into Iziko's
Biodiversity Explorer
website) in March of this year (2007).
Regarding our second goal, we have been working on a revision of
southern African members of the genus Nesomyrmex, members of which
used to be placed in the genus Leptothorax. This revision will more
than triple the number of known species of this genus in southern
Africa. |
