The Big Apple has long had its unique style of bagel and distinct “New Yawk” accent. Now it has its own species of ant.
Biologists studying six-legged New Yorkers have discovered a never-before-seen breed of the prehistoric insect living in the Broadway medians at 63rd and 76th streets.
“It’s a relative of the cornfield ant, and it looks like it’s from Europe, but we can’t match it up with any of the European species,” said Rob Dunn, a biology professor at North Carolina State University, whose team discovered the insect.
“It’s new to North America, and we believe it’s new to the entire world,” he added.
Researchers believe the “ManhattAnt” — which has not yet been given an official scientific name — may have evolved due to its isolation in the concrete jungle, where it has adapted to a warmer, drier urban environment. The city-slicker ant could also have been an undocumented species that arrived in the city by boat and was identified only discovered and later while colonizing on Broadway.
Dunn stumbled upon the reddish-brown bug by accident when he became interested in city ants while teaching at Columbia University this year.
“At first, we were flying to the tropics to study life,” he said. “But then I thought: What if we look right in front of the building?”
After taking samples from the roadway median, Dunn’s researchers realized back in the lab that the Broadway bugs didn’t match any of the 13,000 known breeds of ant.
“We’re looking to get a sense of whether the diets of urban ants are as crappy as the diets of urban humans,” said Dunn, noting that the New York ants have high levels of carbon in their bodies, the result of a high corn-syrup diet.
The ant isn’t the only species that appears to have evolved differently in New York City.
Scientists studying the white-footed mouse have found that city mice are no longer genetically identical to their country relatives. “Almost every park in New York City has a genetically different population because they’re so isolated and change over time,” said Jason Munshi-South, a scientist at Baruch College. “Outside the city, the mice have larger ears.”
In 2010, an entomologist discovered a new breed of sweat bee in Prospect Park, and in 2002 scientists discovered a new breed of centipede roaming Central Park.
Scientists said the city could be teeming with new species.
“It’s so easy to come across something and think, ‘Someone probably knows what this is,’ ” said Dunn. “But a lot of the time nobody knows what it is. It’s very exciting.”