At the end of May, after hosting a wedding in New Orleans and a Memorial Day Gathering, Katie Guhl founds ants in her 6th floor apartment. These creatures seem to dwell in urban habitats.
These strange occurrences did not go unnoticed. In a Brooklyn forum on Reddit, residents on the 3rd floor and 25th floor found ants in their apartment. Similarly, Melissa Russell Paige, who has lived on the second floor of her apartment for eight years, has never seen ants until now.
All these people have reported the same concern: the ants randomly showed up, and they never saw one ant once until that day.
Citizens of Westchester and New Jersey have also spoken out about this issue. They talk about the absurdities about these ants. This statement has inspired Samantha Kennett, a graduate student at Kennesaw State University in South Georgia, to further investigate this ant situation.
As a student who studies urban ant ecology in Dr. Clint Penick’s social insects lab, Kennett is curious about the type of ant appearing, and why these insects are appearing in such unusual places.
She later discovered that they were called Lasius emarginatus, a possible European immigrant imported by ship.
“My research focuses on understanding how this ant, who is now one of the most common ants in New York city, has been able to be so successful, surviving in highly urban habitats,” said Ms. Kennett, when finding these ants on trees in Broadway and midtown. “We found them in Times Square, they are everywhere.”
Kennett also called for other residents of the urban regions to find out how high these ants can possibly crawl, and how widespread this population is becoming.
To make the term of the Lasius emarginatus shorter, people have now nicknamed it as the “ManhattAnt.” Later, Kennett started an online project to count the populations that have ranged from New Jersey all the way to Long Island.
Despite all of this evidence, some were still disbelieving.
Jesse Scavella of Evergreen Eco Pest Control claimed that these ants have been in the same region for quite a while. He was not shocked to be told that these ants have been climbing several floors on skyscrapers of New York City.
The time it would take to finalize this project is yet to be known.
Sources cited:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1657469576418x451469103498758800/In%20N.Y.C.%20Apartments%2C%20the%20Ants%20Go%20Marching%20Up%20-%20The%20New%20York%20Times.pdf
These strange occurrences did not go unnoticed. In a Brooklyn forum on Reddit, residents on the 3rd floor and 25th floor found ants in their apartment. Similarly, Melissa Russell Paige, who has lived on the second floor of her apartment for eight years, has never seen ants until now.
All these people have reported the same concern: the ants randomly showed up, and they never saw one ant once until that day.
Citizens of Westchester and New Jersey have also spoken out about this issue. They talk about the absurdities about these ants. This statement has inspired Samantha Kennett, a graduate student at Kennesaw State University in South Georgia, to further investigate this ant situation.
As a student who studies urban ant ecology in Dr. Clint Penick’s social insects lab, Kennett is curious about the type of ant appearing, and why these insects are appearing in such unusual places.
She later discovered that they were called Lasius emarginatus, a possible European immigrant imported by ship.
“My research focuses on understanding how this ant, who is now one of the most common ants in New York city, has been able to be so successful, surviving in highly urban habitats,” said Ms. Kennett, when finding these ants on trees in Broadway and midtown. “We found them in Times Square, they are everywhere.”
Kennett also called for other residents of the urban regions to find out how high these ants can possibly crawl, and how widespread this population is becoming.
To make the term of the Lasius emarginatus shorter, people have now nicknamed it as the “ManhattAnt.” Later, Kennett started an online project to count the populations that have ranged from New Jersey all the way to Long Island.
Despite all of this evidence, some were still disbelieving.
Jesse Scavella of Evergreen Eco Pest Control claimed that these ants have been in the same region for quite a while. He was not shocked to be told that these ants have been climbing several floors on skyscrapers of New York City.
The time it would take to finalize this project is yet to be known.
Sources cited:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1657469576418x451469103498758800/In%20N.Y.C.%20Apartments%2C%20the%20Ants%20Go%20Marching%20Up%20-%20The%20New%20York%20Times.pdf
