13 - Future directions for wood ant ecology and conservation

Summary

The preceding twelve chapters of this book demonstrate the great wealth of knowledge that has been established through more than a hundred years of research into wood ant ecology. Nevertheless, the next hundred years of wood ant research will not lack study topics. This chapter draws out some key themes for future work and highlights knowledge gaps, some easily addressed, others posing significant research challenges.

Much of our existing knowledge comes from detailed work on a particular species at a particular site. Given the level of ecological variation, not just between species but also between populations of the same species, there is a clear need for broad comparative work across many species and the different environments they inhabit, ideally including both Eurasian and North American species when appropriate.

Wood ants test some of our most fundamental ideas about social insects. The polydomous nesting system, seen in many wood ant species, challenges the very notion of an ‘ant colony’, traditionally understood as a ‘factory within a fortress’ (Oster and Wilson 1978). Polydomy has implications for relatedness, dispersal, foraging organisation and wood ant conservation, and so nesting strategy must be taken into consideration in future work on wood ant ecology. In the wood ants, behaviours and processes occurring outside the nest are, as in all social insects, much better understood than those occurring inside the nest. Regarding in-nest behaviours, there are still some fairly basic behavioural ecology questions to be answered. Even outside the nest, while it has been established that the part wood ants play in the forest ecosystem is complex, we are far from a full characterisation of their role. Future work must go beyond looking at isolated sets of interactions, to set observed effects in their ecological context, both to further our knowledge of this ecologically important group, and to provide essential data to aid management and conservation.

Knowledge gaps and open questions

What and where are the wood ants?

The first step in any ecological study is to ask what we are studying and where it occurs. Despite the work of many ecologists over the last 100 years, we are still very far from being able to answer these two fundamental questions for wood ants.