Subject Area
Biology
Description
The Asian Needle Ant (Brachyponera chinensis) is an invasive species currently spreading on the Eastern Coast of the United States. They were first reported around the 1930s in Florida and have since migrated to Massachusetts. As an invasive species, this pest originating from Asia has a negative impact on environment ecosystems and other species of ants. Asian Needle Ants displace resident ant colonies, taking over nesting sites by consuming food sources and decreasing the amount of space other ant colonies can use. They are also known to have a sting that contains venom more likely to result in a fatal allergic reaction in humans when compared to the average honeybee. In the past six years, the spread of Asian Needle Ants has increased at an extremely fast rate, an observation made clear by comparing the sparse observations collected by iNaturalist in 2016 to the abundant number that can be viewed today. I hypothesize that one factor responsible for the expansion of Asian Needle Ants in the United States is an increase in temperature over the past few years . In this project, I studied the relationship between the Asian Needle Ant colony presence and the annual temperature of counties in Maryland from 2016-2022. BIO 340 final project
Publisher
Providence College
Date
Spring 5-2-2024
Type
Poster
Format
Text
.pdf (text under image)
Language
English
