Preadaptation of Formica aquilonia and Formica lugubris ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) to low wintering temperatures in Northeast Asia

Abstract

The ants Formica aquilonia and F. lugubris which inhabit the entire forest zone of the North Palaearctic and are absent from the basins of the Yana, Indigirka, and Kolyma rivers were found in the coastal area of the Sea of Okhotsk. A possible climatic conditionality of their occurrence in the Northeast is considered based on the data on the biotopic distribution of ants, the temperature causation of their overwintering, and cold hardiness. On the Sea of Okhotsk coast, these ants overwinter at a depth of 40–200 cm in the soil. During winter, the minimum soil temperature at a depth of 40 cm under the anthill was −5°C. The supercooling temperature of F. aquilonia was not lower than −20.2 ± 0.5°C, that of F. lugubris, not lower than −19.6 ± 0.4°C. Half of F. aquilonia individuals did not survive the daily exposure at −13°C, F. lugubris, at −16°C. These two cold-resistant species could inhabit some biotopes of the Kolyma River basin, similar to F. exsecta, F. lemani, and F. sanguinea, but they are absent there for some reasons that are not related to the temperature. A similar cold hardiness is characteristic of F. aquilonia in Estonia (Maavara, 1971, 1985), where it represents a side effect of diapause, since excessive cold hardiness has no adaptive significance for insects overwintering in the non-freezing soils of Estonia. Colonization of Siberia by ant species turned out to be possible only due to the existing cold hardiness, i.e. preadaptation to low temperature. On the Sea of Okhotsk coast, cold hardiness of the ants is non-adaptive due to the relatively mild conditions during winter.