YELLOW TREASURES

This particular yellow treasure is the yellow meadow ant Lasius flavus (Fabricius, 1782), and of course I am talking about ecological treasures. The yellow meadow ant is a keystone species sensu zoologist Robert T. Paine, i.e. “a species playing a critical role in maintaining the structure of an ecological community and affecting many other organisms in an ecosystem”. Through their activities and construction of ant-hills, these ants have multiple biodiversity benefits. They increase the number and heterogeneity of microhabitats in the grassland, both because of the hills themselves which are generally acidic and support calcifugous plants, but also through influences on inter-hill soil ecology and the attraction of predators. Consequently, this greatly increases the number of species of both fauna and flora associated with this type of grassland.

A fascinating paper in a recent issue of the British Journal of Entomology and Natural History[1] discusses recent and past research on ant-hill grassland at Wytham Woods, an Oxfordshire site which any ecological scientist of my era will recall with enthusiasm because of the many seminal studies undertaken there. Plants found almost exclusively on the ant-hills included common & dwarf mouse-ears, common chickweed, common whitlow-grass, cut-leaved crane’s-bill, early forget-me-not, lesser trefoil, parsley-piert, rue-leaved, three-leaved & three-nerved sandworts, small-flowered buttercup, wall speedwell, and several bryophytes. The research also revealed a long list of invertebrates and other animals associated with the presence of the yellow meadow ant, including rabbit, green woodpecker, grey partridge, chough, thirteen hemipteran bugs, the yellow ant’s-nest beetle (Claviger testaceus), common and chalkhill blue and silver-spotted skipper butterflies, meadow and common field grasshoppers and several others. 

Betts Ecology and Estates manage a number of grasslands where there are yellow meadow ant ant-hills and we are careful to protect and encourage them through appropriate management practices. As we make progress with our biological recording and assessments of Biodiversity Net Gain, we hope to be able to produce our own ant-hill associated species lists for our sites.

© Betts Ecology

[1] King, T.J. (2020). The persistence of Lasius flavus ant-hills and their influence on biodiversity in grasslands. Br. J. Ent. Nat. Hist. 33, 215–21.