Michmutters

AIan Andersen has been collecting and recording specimens of Australian ant species for 40 years with about 8,000 of them glued to cardboard triangles in a government laboratory in Darwin in the country’s far north.

Each year hundreds of specimens are added to the collection, most of them likely new species that don’t even have formal scientific names.

When insect scientists talk about the world’s hotspot for ant diversity – the place with the highest number of species – they often point to the savannahs of Brazil and the Amazon rainforest.

But Andersen, a professor, ant expert and ecologist at Charles Darwin University, says the true global center for ants is Australia’s monsoonal north, which stretches from the Kimberley in Western Australia to the Northern Territory’s top end and north Queensland in the east.

“Ants are a major part of Australia’s natural heritage,” Andersen says. “We realize what a special place this is for marsupials, and for lizards. And before. We are the kingdom of the ant.”

Andersen’s latest research with colleagues has, he says, added further proof of Australia’s claim to be the global capital for ants.

The research looked at specimens of one group of ants called Monomorium nigrius that has only one species formally described in the scientific literature.

But after genetic analysis of 400 specimens, the scientists estimate there are likely 200 different species in the group just in the monsoonal north of Australia, and another 100 across the rest of the country.

“Ant ecologists will say ant diversity is highest in the Amazon – there can be more than 2,000 species there,” he says. “But here in monsoonal Australia we have at least 5,000.”

Andersen and colleagues wrote that their latest findings were “further evidence that monsoonal Australia should be recognized as a global center of ant diversity.”

‘Unbelievably abundant’

Andersen and his ant-searching colleagues are used to discovering entirely new species in their hundreds.

A few weeks ago, Andersen was walking a path in the Iron Range national park on Queensland’s remote Cape York peninsular with PhD student François Brassard.

One 4mm brownish ant caught his eye. To Andersen, it was clearly a type of last night – an uncommon genus in Australia.

“It had this look about it,” says Andersen, who took it back to his lab. The ant was an Anochetus alae – and only the second time it had ever been found (the first occasion was in Cairns in 1983 and was used years later to formally describe the species).

Andersen has been analyzing specimens collected by colleagues from 100 spots around the Sturt Plateau in the Northern Territory.

The results aren’t published yet, but Andersen says they’ve so far counted about 700 species and about half have never been recorded before.

Brassard is Canadian, and has studied ants in the US and in Macau and Hong Kong. He was skeptical that Australia could top the Amazon for ant species, but not any more.

“In Canada we have about 100 species of ant,” he says. “But we’ll find that many in just a few acres around here. The sheer diversity is unreal. It just seems there’s new stuff everywhere.”

Ants are often collected using pitfall traps – a shallow plastic dish dug a few centimeters into the ground which contain a preservative. Andersen uses ethylene glycol, better known as antifreeze.

His record is 27 species in one 4.5cm wide trap left out for two days in the Northern Territory’s Kakadu national park.

It’s a measure of the sheer numbers of ants in the country.

“People wouldn’t even notice them despite the fact they’re unbelievably abundant around Australia,” he says. “You can have dozens of colonies in an area that’s only 10 by 10 meters.”

Ants play a critical role in ecosystems. They both create and turn over soil, they disperse seeds, some defend plants, and they’re all food for other animals.

If you could weigh all the world’s land-based fauna, Andersen says about 20% of the mass would be taken up by ants.

“They are serious creatures in our environment,” he says They are gun nutrient recyclers. They play an incredibly important role in the flow of energy and nutrients through ecosystems. Ants are down there running the show.”

A 400-year taxonomic challenge

Andersen started collecting ants 40 years ago, and his collection – and those of many others – is housed at CSIRO’s laboratory in Darwin.

Even among these ants – almost all of which are unique to Australia – only 1,500 have been formally named by taxonomists. The collection is one of the largest on the planet.

When scientists such as Andersen use new techniques to discover the true diversity among organisms, it throws up a major challenge for taxonomists – the scientists who painstakingly describe new species and then publish the details in journals.

Prof Andy Austin is the director of Taxonomy Australia. He says hyper-diverse groups of fauna – such as ants – are ushering in a quiet revolution for the profession.

Traditional methods of drafting detailed descriptions, drawings and creating flow-charts, known as keys, to identify one species from another are impractical when new scientific methods offer up thousands and thousands of new candidates.

“You can’t keep doing traditional taxonomy that was developed a hundred or more years ago,” he says.

Austin himself has described about 650 new species – mostly wasps – but it took up most of his 40-year career.

“For Australia, we describe about 1,200 species a year of all organisms. It would take you 400 years to finish all Australia’s biota, and that’s unacceptable for so many reasons.”

He says the new breed of taxonomists are using new techniques, such as describing new species using imaging and genetic data that’s automated. That puts the challenge of describing thousands of new ant species within reach.

“We can’t ask sensible questions about our flora and fauna until we know what’s actually on the continent,” he says.

As the climate changes and land-clearing continues, “there are probably going to be species that go extinct before we get a chance to document them.”

Yon February 1997, at midnight, I was riding my pushbike through a park on my way to Canberra’s city center when I somehow became sprawled on the ground, my palms bloodied and covered in gravel. Earlier I had been drinking with friends; now, so it seemed, a fence had come out of nowhere.

Every week that summer I had been going to Heaven, Canberra’s only gay nightclub. I had told no one about my nocturnal adventures. Nor had I met anyone. I had grown up listening to the Cure, not Madonna. Rather than go shopping, I could talk for hours about the Irish novelist Colm Tóibín. Sitting around a campfire was my thing, not pumping weights.

“Go home,” I told myself. “This is not for you. And you’re drunk.”

But, driven by a subterranean need, I picked myself up and kept going.

Half an hour later, a figure, slim and lithe, appeared on the dance floor. Doc Marten boots. Tight black jeans. A black, ribbed top, the sort Depeche Mode would have worn in their younger years. Bleached blonde hair. and he had moves. (I danced like a robot whose batteries were running out.)

Two weeks later, Tim moved into my flat.

Two months after that, we brought home a Dalmatian puppy.

During our third year together, we bought a car. Then a house.

By 2002, however, it became obvious that we were two very independent people. Claustrophobia had set in. The relationship ended.

Although I was now 32, I wanted to have another go at the gay scene. I did not want to meet anyone; I wanted to go home with guys and not exchange phone numbers, or even names. I lost weight. I wore nightclub clothes – tight white tops and flared denim jeans. I only listened to dance music.

I discovered ecstasy.

In 2003, two friends and I went to Sydney for Mardi Gras. Before the parade we drunk bottles of champagne; we took a pill each. In a car park, a joint. Just before we went through the party turnstiles, we took more pills.

Minutes later, my legs buckled.

As topless men danced around me, abs and pecs lit up by strobe lights, I exited the venue – in a wheelchair.

In the medical tent, a softly spoken doctor laid me down on a gurney.

I have held my hand.

Three girls in their late teens appeared; apparently one of them was experiencing hot patches on her brain. Then a man in his early twenties: the medical team laid him on a gurney too. “He’s turning blue,” said one of the doctors. “Call an ambulance.” Twenty minutes later, I heard the same doctor say into his mobile phone from him. “We really need that ambulance.”

All the while, the kind doctor dropped by to hold my hand.

By dawn I could stand again.

“Take care,” said my doctor. “You were as pale as a ghost when you were brought in. We were very worried about you.”

I found my friends.

Down at Bondi, the sun a burning ball over the ocean, I texted Tim and told him what had happened. “I hope you’re OK now,” he replied.

On the train back to Canberra, I listened to Ministry of Sound’s Chillout Sessions Volume 3, bought on Tim’s recommendation. It included an acoustic version of Another Chance by Roger Sanchez, the lyrics little more than the title repeated over and over.

I looked out the window and, in that moment, felt a soft but unmistakable warmth. I knew then that with Tim, I had experienced love. It had been imperfect and, at times, bewildering, but it had also been real.

Three months later, Tim and I got back together. This time we promised each other to take things slow, to see each other every week, but also to respect – indeed encourage – independence.

Twenty years later, that is what we are still doing. We live in towns an hour’s drive apart, and see each other every week.

Our Saturday evenings these days are spent on the couch, a blanket over our legs and torsos, a whiskey glass in one hand and a piece of chocolate in the other, something streaming on the TV. As always, around 9pm, Tim will turn to me and say, “Is it time for bed now, pumpkin?”