A COMMUNITY FOUND: A member of the new species of ant Diblocondyla Bangalorica. — PHOTO: By Special Arrangement

Bangalore: If an ant intrudes into your picnic at Cubbon Park, think twice before you act against it. It could be the local Diblocondyla bangalorica or the extremely rare Myrmecina Urbanii.

Well, yes. Bangalore now has a new species of ant named after it — Diblocondyla bangalorica. The person who has named the 12th species of ants in the genus Diblocondyla after the city is Thresiamma Varghese, a research associate at environmentalist Raghavendra Gadagkar's laboratory at the Centre for Ecological Studies in the Indian Institute of Science. "It is the first species of this particular genus that has been found in India. That is why I decided to name it after Bangalore.

The other 11 species are from other parts of the world," Dr. Varghese told The Hindu. This species of ant was first discovered by Sunil Kumar and Srihari K.T., then research associates at Mr. Gadagkar's laboratory, in 1996. "We were doing a small project on ant diversity in Bangalore. And on the IISc. campus, we found this particular species of ant," says Mr. Kumar.

Unique features

Dr. Varghese, in her research paper, says D. bangalorica differs from other known species by having a small worker size and a smaller queen size.

The ant prefers to inhabit the holes on dead twigs of two trees — Plumeria alba and Plumeria rubra. The workers forage individually on tree trunks and among foliage. When disturbed, they hide in deep grooves on the tree trunk.

A comprehensive survey was made from May 2004 to March 2005 in and around Bangalore, Masinagudi (Western Ghats), Kodagu and in Mananthavady district of Kerala to study the distribution and nesting behaviour of D. bangalorica. This species of ant has not been found elsewhere except in Cubbon Park and IISc. campus.

Dr. Varghese and Ajay Narendra, an ant researcher, have found another species of ant called Myrmecina Urbanii. This is an extremely rare ant that has been reported only from Kerala. "The exciting aspect about this species is that the queen ant is polymorphic too, which means it is of different sizes. In other species, only the worker ants are of different sizes. "This opens up questions of how delegation of work to worker ants happen," said Mr. Narendra. Await more such exciting discoveries as Bangalore has a rich diversity of ants.

The whole of Britain has only 56 ant species while Bangalore alone has 85 ant species, says Mr. Kumar.

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