Profiler of the bad guys: what are the characteristics of invasive ants?

There are more than 12.000 described species of ants living on every landmass on Earth but Antarctica. They are ubiquitous and dominant members of most ecosystems. A small subset of these species has become invasive following human-mediated transportation and have been shown to displace numerous native species, alter communities and disrupt crucial ecosystem functions. Certain ecological characteristics such as large colony size or polygyny are often said to be associated with invasive ants. However, no quantitative study has yet compared the frequency of a large number of traits in invasive ants to the frequency in non-invasive ants due to the lack of information on those traits. We developed a database of ecological characteristics – “AntProfiler” – which includes information on species morphology, colony dynamics, behaviour, habitat, nesting sites, diet, species interactions and distribution by countries. Our database is a publically available research tool to study the ecology of ants and relies on the contribution of the myrmecologist community to provide information on ants. Here, we assess quantitatively the frequency of different ecological traits in invasive ants to describe the “profile” of a typical invasive ant. Our goal is to predict the probability that any given ant species may become invasive in the future, based on its set of ecological traits. Finally, we will talk about ways in which the database could benefit researchers working in the field.