TEMPLE, N.H. — About fifty years ago, a mated queen ant dropped to the forest floor on the Temple and Lyndeborough, N.H., town line.
She’d flown from a colony miles away, on a search-and-destroy mission to claim a home for her future colony.
She soon infiltrated a local hill of black and silver ants, crawling deep into the warrens to the host queen’s chamber. There, she killed the unsuspecting queen and assumed her identity, coating herself in the host queen’s pheromones.
The black and silver workers diligently tended her eggs, not knowing that soon, the usurper queen’s red and black Allegheny mound ant progeny would replace them at their own job.
Today, the colony is a teeming subterranean metropolis of anywhere between half and three-quarters of a million ants, perpetuated by several genetically identical queens dwelling deep beneath a swath of interconnected mounds.
This might sound like a feudal epic crossed with science fiction, but according to Aaron Ellison, a senior research fellow and deputy director at Harvard Forest in Petersham, Mass., it’s likely how the Allegheny mound ant came to the Temple town forest. He visited the colony recently after hearing a description of the six or seven active, waist-high mounds from town Conservation Commission member Scott Hecker.
Ellison authored A Field Guide to the Ants of New England, and said the Temple colony had not previously been reported.
“There aren’t a lot of big colonies that I know in New England,” he said, and that this one was at the northern limit of the species’ distribution along the East Coast.
Mounds like the ones in Temple would be a likelier sight in southeastern states, though there’s a similar-sized colony on top of Mount Grace in Warwick, Mass., according to Ellison.
He said the ants will prune vegetation that grows on their mounds, but abandon them as forest shade encroaches. Ellison was surprised that the colony appears to have stayed in place, a forest clearing that hadn’t grown over in 50 or 60 years.
“Do what you can to keep it here,” he said.
Colonies are extremely resilient: The queens dwell between twelve and eighteen feet underground, well-insulated from bear swipes or human footfalls.
Ellison said that “about 80 percent” of the calls he receives about ants are for advice on how to eradicate them, but he pointed out the species’ benefits.
“Ants are a little more charismatic than plants — some plants, anyway,” he said. “Little kids notice them … and they’re good at telling us how the world works.”