Edithvale-Seaford Wetlands with Kinjia Munkara-Murray

At the Edithvale Seaford Wetlands, I’m walking with Kinjia Munkara Murray, a proud Tiwi and Rembarrnga woman, and someone who sees a whole world most of us miss.

From the start, we’re stopping constantly. Looking at ants, watching movement on the ground, noticing things I would have walked straight past.

Kinjia has been into insects for as long as she can remember, and it shows. As we walk, she opens up the diversity of ants around Melbourne, how different species live, and how much is going on in even a small patch of ground.

We talk about how insects are often overlooked, despite the huge role they play in ecosystems, turning over soil, spreading seeds, pollinating plants, and keeping everything in balance.

There’s also a different way of understanding them. Kinjia shares how insects are thought about through Tiwi knowledge, where behaviour and relationships matter just as much as names.

This walk might shift your perspective. You start to realise just how much is happening beneath your feet.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'd like to acknowledge the Bunerong and Boonerong people as the traditional owners of the land where this recording was made. Over the past few months, I've been walking through reserves around Melbourne, Panam, and recording conversations along the way. I've met with traditional owners of First Nations peoples, conservationists, ecologists, and others who've chosen a place that matters to them. We walk and talk about nature, what lives there, what's changed, and what needs protect it. You'll hear our footsteps, the wind in the trees, the birds overhead, and the city not too far away. This is Finding Melbourne's nature. We're in the southeast of Melbourne at the Edith Bell Seaford Wetlands. And it's one of a few trips we're going to be making to this reserve. But today it's all about ants. And we're lucky to be joined by the amazing ant expert Kingia Mankara Murray. She's going to be teaching us all about how these fascinating creatures help shape the ecosystems around us. Enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

My name is Kinja Mankara Murray, proud Te Lee Mambatinga woman, and mad insect enthusiast. And I've brought you to the Edith Vale Seaford Wetlands today.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

So when did you start getting into insects?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

My mum loves telling me this story. When I was like a young toddler, we're outside. Mum's probably doing the washing and I was just playing outside and she turns around, she sees me just sitting on the ground watching this trail of ants walk up the wall on the side of the house. And I think it was at that moment that she sort of clocked, like, oh I think this one's gonna be into insects. And that's kind of how it feels. Like I think I've just always always loved insects. Like I've always been, you know, outside in the yard and like um always looking, yeah, looking on the ground, looking for insects. And um I used to keep like insects and terrariums at home, much to my mum's horror, like all things I'd be bringing home, like beetles or um caterpillars, like you know, sometimes little lizards and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Yeah, and I used to keep them at home and then just like feed them, find out what they like to eat. Um, and in the case of like caterpillars, I'd raise them until they'd turn into butterflies and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Wow, you actually watched that happen.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah, yep. So um yeah, sort of always been into insects really, ever since I can remember. I have to yeah, tell you in advance too when you're walking around with insect enthusiasts, yeah. There's constant stopping. Just stopping to look at ants and all kinds of interesting things.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

So um, you've got a little tool, I see.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

I have.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Um I've got some tools of the trade.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Yeah. Let me see. Little microscope you use, is it?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like a little so I can grab if I can grab one of these ants, we're gonna have a look at it up close. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

How many do you know how many ant species there are in in say Victoria or around Greater Melbourne?

SPEAKER_00 3:36

I think um say for like Metro Melbourne region, I think from memory it's up to around like maybe 500, 600 that have actually been um like described.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

That many species, eventually. Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Yeah, no, we're we're up to like thousands of species just in Australia.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Really?

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

So the little ants you see might there might be massive differences that we just don't take notice of.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, what's cool as well is um people who are doing genetic work on ants, and they're finding that there's a lot of species that look morphologically the same, but are actually genetically different.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

So it's like further complicating things. It's like, whoa, there's actually whole species complexes we didn't even know about, like we just thought they were all the same species. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Because there's no visible difference on them, sort of.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Yeah, yeah. It starts to get a bit, um, it sort of blurs the lines a bit, doesn't it? When between what's what is a species and what isn't when you get into that genetic space. I think because I've traditionally um been taught through um like the traditional methods of identification uh through like the morphology, yes, I sort of am more biased towards preferring that as a mode of identification. Like if if I can identify that looks different, then to me I I feel like it's something different.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

So did you grow you grew up in Darwin?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

And Tiwee. Yeah, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Yeah, so I grew up in Darwin um and a little bit spent a bit of time growing up on Bathurst Island as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

And I credit both of those places as being um where I probably develop much of my love for insects because it's an absolute tropical paradise. It's so highly diverse and you know abundant in various different insect groups, so that had a big part to play. That said though, I have spent time, part of my childhood growing up in um parts of Western Vic, and there's real beautiful and amazing insects that you can find out there too.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Um do you know if there's any was there if there was any traditional owner connection stories to ants up north?

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Yeah, so um I don't know too much about like other mobs stories, yeah, except for like I think it's pretty famous the story in like central desert country around like the honey and dreaming and that. Yeah. Um but the only sort of stories that I know um like from TB Islands um is like so we don't have names for like every single ant species. The way we actually like categorize them is based on their like behaviour or the way that they sort of present themselves to us. So we have like distinct categories of ants, you know, there's ones that we call like cheeky ants, cheeky ants, cheeky ants, because they're the ones that exhibit that more dominant aggressive behaviour, and that's actually something that um in sort of uh like Western literature around ant behaviour, it's also something that's been described through a different name. It's like what you what you would call, I think they just call it like the dominant um species within that sort of community. There's yeah, there's some ant species that um will quite literally like bully other ants out of that area or out of like resources or out of the best times to forage. So yeah, there's some parallels there between the way that Tiwi sort of categorize different ant groups and some of the ways that um mumicologists also categorize ant groups. Um but one so yeah I mentioned not all the ant species are named in Tiwi language, but we do have a name for green weaver ants.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Uh their scientific name is Icaphilus maradina.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Um I can't remember that name right now, but but the reason we have a name for that ant is because they have medicinal uses for us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

I never knew any of this. This is just really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah. This is cool. I like like look up, like they've obviously done reveg work here.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Yeah, it's good reveg.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

See, yeah, like I like the different layers.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Bankshears in the mid and this soil, because it's got that, it's just the remnants of those sand dunes, you know, that sort of sandy soil is really cool.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

How many ants do you reckon you can ID around Melbourne?

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Um gee, that's a good question. Um I mean I'm pretty familiar with like um most of the subfamilies we have around Metro Melbourne.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Um, and some of the genera would be pretty confident about IDing. I I think around these wetlands I estimate that I've probably um seen about maybe 15-20 different ant species.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

That's huge. I would not have known that before you said that just then. There are that many species. And you even know the times, you're more likely to see ants, right? Like we're coming out at a particular time.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Uh different ants, like species or different groups will occupy different foraging windows throughout a uh 24 win 24-hour window.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Um, they've sort of evolved to occupy those different niches, but uh, as a general sort of statement, you can expect to find ants out and about in those sort of like dusk and dawn periods.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Um but that said you've got some ants that are just active all the time, yeah. Um, and then you've got ants that are more active at night, of course.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Um, yeah, so it's like you get you get diurnal, nocturnal, you know, crepuscular and everything in between when it comes to ants. So yeah, but the reason I suggest we come out today at four o'clock is because a lot of my favourite ants are active at this time. I'm hoping we'll find some bull ants today.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, cool.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

They're very charismatic.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

So are there different species of bull ants as well? Or are they all sort of just one bull ant?

SPEAKER_00 10:01

There are many different species of bull ants, um, and Victoria has quite a high number of those different species.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

I think yeah, Victoria, South Australia, yeah, quite quite rich in bull ant species. And they're one of my personal favorites just because they're just super charismatic and they have incredible eyesight.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Um they actually forage and find their way using landmarks. So if yeah, when they come out of their nest, they know what trees or plants or rocks and stuff are nearby, and they use that to orient themselves, find their way back, and it's a much older method of navigation versus ants that use um uh like pheromones and sort of chemical trails and things like that. That that sort of ability evolved much later for ants. So bull ants are quite um yeah, quite ancient in that respect. And bull ants they they um they forage solo as well, so they don't go out in big groups and they don't really take down prey in groups, like they'll just like kill an insect by itself and drag it back to the nest for the most part.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Did you do some studies on ants? Am I right in thinking that?

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Yeah, I did actually. So I actually did my masters on ants.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Um, and I remember um when I was first designing my master's project, yeah. People were asking me, like, oh well, okay, we know you want to go and study insects on Bathurst Island, but what would you like to focus on in particular? And I was like, what? I want to study all the insects. Like, let's just do a full insect source survey on Bathurst Island. And they're like, you know you've got two years to do this master's, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Um so I was like, well, okay, I'll I'll focus on ants then because I actually had a really awesome, um, incredible set of supervisors for my master's studies. Uh one of my supervisors was at the University of Melbourne, which I was studying at principally, but I also had a co-supervisor from Charles Dalnuni, and he is an incredible memologist, he's been studying ants for a very, very long time. Um, and is one of the principal experts on Australian ants. Um, and so I was like, well I gotta I gotta you know take advantage of that knowledge that this man has and the incredible experience he has and all that, so I ended up deciding to focus on ants for my master's and so yeah I did my um research on ants of Bathostylin. Have you ever thought you might have found a new species? Um well I did. I found nine new species of ants during my master's work. Um and no, I didn't name them. People usually follow up with a question asking if I named these ants.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Um, and like I was uh sort of alluding to before, like ants, like they've got various different communities in various layers of vegetation. So I guess in the wetlands here it's not as complex in terms of those vegetation layers, but back where we were in the trees and that, you're gonna have different ants that live in the leaf litter, and those communities are gonna be very different to ants that are living like underground, subterranean.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Um and those are gonna be very different to the ants that are gonna live on trees and in the leaves and the canopies of the trees.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

And what were you thinking about your preferences for naming?

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Yeah, that's right, yeah, naming. Um, yeah, look, I'm not I'm not like as interested in the desire to name everything.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Like I kind of align more with like the Tiwi way of categorizing things based on like their behavioural functions or yeah, just sort of even their sort of um I know people like to define groups of animals based on their feeding preferences and stuff like that. Yeah, so I think I think that's more useful in an ecological context. So, like, yeah, like I was saying before, cheeky ants, shy ants, um, and like painful ants, that's another group, like in Tiwi categorization. So, yeah, like things like that is more interesting, I think.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

What sort of um relationships do ants have with rain?

SPEAKER_00 14:49

So, one thing that's really common with ants, many ant species, is they like to send out their new allates or like their new queens, the reproducing um caste. Uh they like to send them out after it's rained, so often after you get them fresh spring rains, they'll um you'll see all of like the little winged queen ants flying around. Um they'll just be heaps of them, sometimes there's thousands of them, hundreds and thousands, depending on where you are. They can just be like tons of them. And they'll release them after these spring rains, people think, because like the ground is soft and moist, and when them queen ants mate and they um chew off their wings and they dig a little founding chamber in the soil, um it's potential it's potentially likely that like that moist rain softens up the soil and makes it easier for them to actually build that founding chamber, and that moisture helps them to keep that first batch of eggs moist as well. So, yeah, you'll often see yeah, all the ant queens and kings flying around after it rains.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Right, so so that's how it works. They'll find their own little space, chew the wings off, go into like a cavity, is it?

SPEAKER_00 16:17

And then Yeah, they'll dig like a little little um hole in the ground, yeah, close it all up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

And then other ants start bringing them food and stuff?

SPEAKER_00 16:27

No, so um the depending on the type of ant, yeah, there's something called uh cloustral uh like clustral ants and non-clostral. Yeah, and clusteral um ants refers to when the ants are fully self-contained and they just live off their own energy reserves until their first generation of workers hatches, and then that generation of workers goes out and gets food for the queen. So that queen has to like fully live off whatever energy reserves she left her own like original nest from. Um yeah, live off that until she can raise that generation of workers. Um but then you got non-clostal ants, and they're the ones like um bull ant species, where those queens will lay them eggs but then they'll go out and look for food. Yeah, they'll go out and look for food to keep them energy reserves up while they're raising that first generation of workers. But once those first uh workers hatch, um they'll start taking care of the queen and going out foraging for food.

unknown 17:37

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

And then you've got semiclostural as well, so that's ants that might need a bit more food, but they're like kind of in between being fully independent and not independent.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

That's incredible. I didn't know any of this. Um it's such a common thing.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Yeah. I don't love the little wrens.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah, beautiful blue wren.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Also, so snakes love these wetlands, but uh much to my um disappointment, I rarely ever see them. So I hope we see some.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

That'd be nice. There's a black-shoulder kite just up there.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Oh wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Hovering over.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

So that's the one downside to being um an insect lover is you're never looking up at in the sky at birds, you're only looking at the ground all the time. So I miss all the birds and that.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Do you know how old ants are? Like how long have they been in in an evolution sense?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Oh, like millions of years old. Like at least. Like, yeah, they're quite ancient. Um they've been around since the time of like um when we had that glorious period during you know the Earth's history and we had huge, mega-sized invertebrates that like because the there was so much oxygen-rich air and so many resources, we had like mega spiders and mega millipedes and huge dragonflies and stuff. So we've had ants for a long, long time.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Would you imagine those insect big insects? Are they like the size of wombats and things?

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Really?

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Yeah, even bigger. Like, yeah, some of them got huge. And if I had a time travel machine, I'd want to go back and see these massive invertebrates.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

I think I'd be keen.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Yeah. I wonder if they'd try and eat a human, probably. If they're big enough.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

A lot of people are scared of insects who don't know much about them.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Do you have any thoughts on why you don't need to be scared or I think most insects are very much just trying to get away from you. So when they do behaviour or like if they they if they exhibit behavior that you're not familiar with, like it's usually just a defence mechanism from them. Like I know people get scared of like huntsmen and and and cockroaches that seem to like run directly towards them. And often they're just looking for like a tree to you know climb up and escape and get away from you, or they're looking for a shadow to like get out of the sun, you know, and you happen to be the tallest object standing nearby.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

So a lot of the times they're just trying to get away. Um, it's very rare that insects are actually like physically trying to attack you, or you know. Um but even then it's often because they're like defending something.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

It's like with ants, a lot of ant species, um, you know, if you're like, if you're messing around with their nest, they're gonna they're gonna go crazy. They're gonna try and attack you, you know. Um same with like wasps. Well, look at these cool guys. I know this ant because the one of their common names is cocktail ants. Nonochroma is the genus name, I'm pretty sure. Um and yeah, they like they like living in trees, these ones. You always see them on tree trunks and stuff. Um yeah, so but yeah, talking about diagnostic differences, where you find ants, that can be one big sort of um indicator because certain species will only live like in trees, you know, and then others will only live in the soil. So yeah, if you find certain things on the trees, you can assume it's one of them groups.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

So those ones that we saw before that were on the ground. This one being in a tree. The ones that were on the ground may never go up trees, sort of thing, you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Oh look, sometimes um uh like when they're foraging, they might be, you know, interested in sort of climbing up a tree trunk and having a look at what's up there. Yeah. But generally, like the ones that you can see here, these ants that have got a bit of a trail going up this um tree trunk here. I think it's because they've probably got a nest up there somewhere and they're sending their foragers out down along this tree trunk. These guys probably maybe potentially do a bit of foraging. Oh, there's a bullet! Oh look, there she is! Oh isn't she beautiful? Look at her. I wonder if she'll let me grab her leg.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Oh wow. Oh wow, you picked it up.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Stunning. Yeah. So that's uh Mermesia brevanota. So this bullyan species, they're one of the largest, and they're identifiable. Oh yeah, she's dropped there, but you can tell it's a brevenoda because they're huge and they're red. They got that red coloured body and that black gaster. But look how bloody cute they are. And see, real intelligent because they got because they got that good eyesight.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Like when you put she's looking, you know, she's looking at what I'm doing when I'm putting my finger near her, near her.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

What's the setup with eyes on these ants?

SPEAKER_00 22:46

The setup?

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yeah, like are they just two eyes or multiple eyes?

SPEAKER_00 22:50

They they've got like some of them have got like a weird um mini like non-functioning third eye in the middle of their head. Um, I don't know too much about the function of that third eye. Um I think it's like very vestigial in most cases. Um but yeah, not 100% on that. But yeah, then for them the main setup is just two eyes, those two main eyes. And some ant species, like ones that are purely um subterranean that never ever come up to the surface, they their eyes are reduced to minuscule. Because they've like, you know, losing that adaptation for sight. But then, yeah, others like this bull ant, um, they've got some of the best vision out of any ant species. Really? So they they yeah, because they're so um vision focused.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

They are good looking, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Yeah. Look, so standing here now, there's three different species of ants. That there is a different species to this one on the trunk that's on that lower branch, and we just saw the bull ant. So that's three species in a one-meter, you know, one by one meter square. I think that's the same one that nonochroma that we picked up before. And there's another um genus of ants I'm hoping we'll see, and they're called chromatogaster. Um, and they have cool heart-shaped, heart-shaped gasters and they're they're really cool. So we'll see if we can spot some at some point.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

So is this a healthy site for ants, would you say, here at Seaford?

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Oh, we've got another fourth ant species. Yeah. Um, I'll answer your question in a second.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Yeah, these are different again.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

These are different again. These are um commonly known as carpenter ants.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Carpenter ants.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Um, I think sometimes people call them sugar ants.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Yeah, that's what I was thinking in my head. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yeah. That's genus Campanotus. And they're they're very common. Um well, some species are are more nocturnal, you only see them at night. Um, some of them also prefer to live on trees or forage on trees, but often you'll see these many of these species all throughout the day.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Do you know what's going on inside that hole where they're all coming in and out?

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Well, I think because it's now um spring, as uh weather is warming up, like they're feeling those changes in humidity and temperature, they're gonna start um getting real active because they're they're they slow down a lot through the cooler periods of the year. But now's the time to start getting ready, start laying more eggs, start raising more larvae, getting more food to feed them. Um and if the colony's mature enough, now's the time to start thinking about sending out those queens and kings to go out and start their own colonies. So this is a very active time of year for a lot of ant species.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

When you say queens and kings, what's the what's the what's the difference?

SPEAKER_00 25:39

The king ants there they don't have wings or they so um both the kings and queens have have wings. They'll like when they're all flying out and around, they'll find each other while they're flying or while they're on the ground, and they'll mate, and then the king will die, he will have fulfilled his one role. Um yeah, and then the queen is the one that's actually going to go on to found that colony and live for a very long time. And some ant species can live for many, many years. Um, there's bull ant species that can live up to 20 years, 20 20 to 25 years.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Serious?

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Yeah, yeah. That's one ant, one organism living that long.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

So that is that bull ant species we saw before. Do they live a long life, do you know?

SPEAKER_00 26:22

Yeah, yep. Those ones could be living that long.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Really?

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Yep. Um, but then other s ants, smaller ones, they might only live maybe five, ten, fifteen years. So it really just depends on the group.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Even those tiny ones can live a decade or more, can they?

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Uh, I'm not too sure about the ones um like yeah, the anonochrome uh anonochroma and the um uh like iridomermax. I'm not so sure about them, but I yeah, I have heard it just depends on like how active they are and I think the size of them as well. Yeah, but they definitely have that potential to be long-lived.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

God, it gives me a lot of heart. You don't want to stand on something that's 20 years old, sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Like Yeah, it's amazing. Like, isn't it wild to think that yeah, there's like ants, like individual ants, that are like been around potentially since 2000, like you know, like uh or longer.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Check out the red-browed finches on the trail here.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Whoa, that's cool.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Um so what are they generally eating? What's a bull ant eat?

SPEAKER_00 27:33

So um bull ants are omnivorous, but more specifically they eat different things depending on their life stage and what type of um caste they are, like whether they're a worker or the queen. So the queen will eat protein often from like insects, especially when she's uh making enough resources to lay eggs because they need protein to lay eggs, and then the larvae when they hatch also eat protein. The workers will only really eat carbohydrates, so they'll like you know, sugar, um honey, um that kind of like sweet stuff, like the excrement, the excrement from like the aphids and that that produce sweet, sweet tasting matter. Yeah, yep, all that sort of stuff. So that's what the workers will eat and that's what the queen will also eat. Um but there's other ant species who are more like just herbivorous or only eat plants, and you've got some that will only eat seeds. So I'll harvest seeds and I'll keep them in storage in their little food chambers and just munch them seeds.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Are there relationships where if you take out a plant there's no more that food is favoured by an ant and you lose the ant species, or do we know that sort of stuff?

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Yes, I think we do know that there are some species of ants who are um yeah, highly selective in yeah, the choice of say like seed that they'll they'll eat or um yeah, other sort of stuff like that. So yeah, I think that can happen that if you eliminate um certain plant species in an ant's uh habitat, that could um yeah diminish that population for sure. Well yeah, ants are some of the most sort of um abundant when it comes to our like our insect groups, like the um total mass well the total biomass of ants in Australia would probably rival that of any other insect group by many magnitudes. Like there's just that many ants and they've just they've just absolutely dominated in the Australian landscape and have like thrived and thurished uh flourished so well that there's just tons of them. Like when you look at any one square meter of habitat like anywhere where they live, there's just yeah heaps and heaps of them. So they're a very successful group.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

When you're travelling around Melbourne, even do you find yourself dropping into spots to see what the insect life is like there?

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Or yeah, absolutely. I think wherever I go, like I can't help but always automatically be looking for insects, looking for ants. Um gets me into trouble sometimes if I'm meant to be like paying attention and then I'm too busy looking off at some animal, some cool insect. But yeah, like because insects are everywhere and they're you know um you can probably hang your right and go up that hill if you like. Um the um uh like number of insects that have still managed to thrive despite like urbanisation is like quite high. Like ants have done very well for themselves, as you can see from the number of invasive ant species that are found in urban areas. Um like they've managed to leave their own countries and end up in places like Australia because they just do so well living in our houses, you know. But one species that is really common, like I had to deal with these guys in one of the places that I lived in, but Argentinian ants, they're yeah, very, very hard to eradicate because they actually have multiple queens, so they have like mega colonies. So if you think you killed one queen, bam, it's like whack-a-mole, there's another queen. So they're very, very hard to kill, but it's a very effective um like um uh what do you call it? Like a it's a very effective uh system that they have because that's how they've thrived is by having multiple queens that sort of adds like that extra security for them, you know.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

So the the ants you're seeing around your house might not be native ants or probably more likely aren't native ants.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

Yeah, potentially, yeah. Like when you're just looking around your house in the suburbs, some of them are probably invasive species. But again, there's also a lot of um native species that do well in urban areas as well.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

So yeah, it just depends. There are some invasive species that are like of higher priority and higher concern than others.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

All these, as part of this project, I've been visiting all these patches around Melbourne and speaking to people who look at it from all different angles. How important are the patches of bush that are left around Melbourne, wetlands, bush, whatever, for the diversity of insects that we have.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

The importance of our remaining green spaces cannot be understated, especially when it comes to insects and preserving the habitat and environment for insects. It's just um hugely, hugely important. And like I love when I see people making like insect-friendly gardens, like you see people that get like the little bee hotels, things like that, like that's awesome, and like reducing the use of like insect insecticides, pesticides in your garden, that stuff makes a huge difference, and that's really wonderful that people are doing that. We need that, but we also need people conserving our green spaces. Um in like the case of these wetlands, like wetlands and salt marshes are really you know rare habitat types in Victoria, you know, and they're really special, especially in in Melbourne, in Metro Melbourne. So yeah, preserving this habitat habitat type is especially important, not just for insects but for everything in that you know in that um ecosystem. Yeah, because like these some of these ant species we saw today, they can't live in the suburbs, you know, or at least only with great difficulty. Like they need these trees, these grasses, you know, all these sort of plants here, this soil type here, they need that, and they need that like specific spacing in the vegetation. Like, you know, some of these ants need that real open um sort of wetland part there where there's no trees, and other ones need just trees, you know, thickets of trees, and some of them need that receding uh water level as well. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

So we need a diversity of different types of bushland to protect different types of insects as well.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Yes, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

Oh my this has absolutely illuminated me and also plays perfectly on this project. Good! Yeah, and it's something I could have missed out easily, you know that's what's killing me too. It was going I could have not had this represented and I would have missed out a key part of the story sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Yeah. No, it's um hey I think it's certainly um not uncommon. I I think um when people are raising awareness around what you know the animals in our local ecosystems need, I think often insects um might get overshadowed a bit and it could be due to a bit of what you were talking about before where people are sort of afraid of insects, they don't really understand them, or don't really sort of relate to them because they're not all like cute and fuzzy and you know, so I I think people just yeah don't understand insects as much and I think um beyond relating to insects I think people um don't realize the massive amount of ecosystem services that insects provide for us. Um the yeah all the things that they're doing for us to have an enjoyable environment to live in and a safe environment to live in and a healthy and just very beautiful and cool-looking environment to live in. Like a lot of that stuff is largely due to the work that insects do, due to the the sort of niches that they occupy in our ecosystems.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

What sort of ecosystem services do they provide?

SPEAKER_00 36:54

So I think um if I talk about ants specifically, so ants are ecosystem engineers, so they actually turn over soil and as I mentioned before because ants occupy because it's so abundant, and when you look at one square meter of earth, uh the number of ants that are actively turning over that soil as we speak is like too many to count, you know. So they're like all across these wetlands here, all these ants are actively turning over and aerating this soil. They're also harvesting seeds from various plants that have evolved for ants to harvest those seeds so the ants can take those seeds into their little safe chambers underground where those seeds can germinate to create new seedlings. So yeah, they're helping to propagate new species, uh helping to turn over soil, they're also influencing the population balances of various other groups because being a common predator of other insects, they're keeping other insect groups in check. So, like if people don't like having cockroaches in their house or in their garden, well you know what predates on cockroaches? Ants. So ants are sort of yeah, providing that role of keeping um yeah, other insect groups and populations in balance. Oh and there's numerous other things. There's the um uh ants also occupy the role of um uh helping where they're the pollinators, that's the word, yeah. Ants also act as pollinators for many of our species. Um I think something a lot of people not something that not a lot of people know is that bees aren't actually the main pollinator group in Australia, even in Victoria or Melbourne, it's not bees, it's actually flies. So um there's many different groups of flies that act as pollinators, um, and then ants aren't too far behind, so ants have a really big role to play in pollination as well.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

I guess there's a big push around Greater Melbourne to have more cultural burns, and we've seen some great success from having cultural burns. What relationships do burns have with ants?

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Yeah, so oh that's just a really interesting topic, and there's so many, like there are people doing incredible research already on that space of the interaction between ants and fire. Um I think some of the general conclusions that I can also share is that the vast majority of ants in ant communities in Australia are well adapted to fire, particularly when they're the subterranean species, or like the ones that can you know um hide underground. So like when a cool burn goes through, like the type of burn that Trish owners often do, that um won't like impact an ant colony underground if it's the right type of burn. It's cool and it just goes through and those ants are safe underground. Um that said, if you're if you did like a burn in a forest or a rainforest where those ants aren't used to fire, that could certainly damage, you know, or kill that whole group, especially if it's like a species of ants that might like say like live in a tree or something like that rather than underground. So um I guess yeah, the the general statement there is ants have evolved with fire in Australia, so they're used to it, and some of them even need that because after fire you're gonna get those vegetation changes that bring in different resources that ants require for their colonies as well, whether that's seeds, you know, or just different food sources and stuff. So that's the general statements I can sort of make, but there are people who are doing research looking at interactions beyond that, you know, like sort of looking at relationships between frequency and intensity of fire and different ant communities and different vegetation types. So it's really really cool what some people are doing out there.

SPEAKER_01 41:32

And if someone's listening to this and you've converted them, they're like, I just want to get into this now, I want to be like you, I want to know all this stuff, where do they go? Like where's what's what's stage one? Are there guides, are there things to listen to, are there different ways that you can learn?

SPEAKER_00 41:58

If you want to learn more about insects or even about ants, I actually think that like um okay, there's two websites I'd recommend. So YouTube, like there's a thriving, you know, insect admirer community on YouTube, and people will document what it's like, you know, finding cool insects or keeping insects as pets, and that's where I've learned a lot as well from the community there, and there's a really strong ant keeping community in Australia that like uh post stuff on YouTube. So I think YouTube is a really good resource for finding yeah, finding stuff from other insect lovers. Um, the second website that I'd recommend is Ant Wiki, which is like a version of Wikipedia that's just for ants. Um, and there could be ones for other insect groups as well. I've never actually explored that, but I think those are some really good resources to get you started on learning more about ants and insects in general.

SPEAKER_01 42:59

Is iNaturalist good for uploading ant picks too?

SPEAKER_00 43:03

Yes, yeah, iNaturalist is great and muremacologists love it when people are putting ant photos up on iNaturalists. So that's always a really fun resource to use as well and to also um look at as well to refer to if you want to see if something you found might be something that other people have found in that area.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

What about I've been giving people a bit of space if they want to shout anyone out? Is there anyone who's been really big on your journey for the ant world or insect world?

SPEAKER_00 43:37

Um yes, there are a number of people that I'd have to shout out. So my like love of insects is definitely something that was like encouraged or supported by my mum, but then also my grandmother, who I call my moneyow. Um they're both incredible, amazing ecologists and women that just have taught me so much about nature. Um, so I always credit my love for nature to them. That's something I thought would be a really cool idea for a book is going around talking to mobs around Australia and like gathering cool stories about insects, like what you know, like mob stories about insects around Australia because I think there's many many stories that probably exists, but you know, as I said before, people have less of a connection with insects in terms of the general you know Australian population, so it's probably less emphasis on those stories than other stories, but I think that'd be cool.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

Can you please write that? I'm leaving this in as a challenge for you to do it because anyone who's listening is gonna be going, oh god, I hope she does that.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

Cool, yeah. Challenge accepted. And I'll give you another piece of knowledge, yeah, something you might find really cool. The Tiwi word for ants is walla wallinga. Or for plural, we say walla wallangui for multiple ants. But walla wallinger, do you want to try to say it?

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Uh Wally Wallinger. Wally wallinger.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Yes, got it, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 45:28

I'll never look at ants the same after this episode, and I hope that you find a whole new world yourself. Please, if you're interested in finding more episodes, check out Finding Melbourne's Nature.com, follow us on social media, or listen to us on your favourite streaming platform. I'm always interested in your reviews and feedback, so please put it out there and I'd love to hear what you think. Thanks so much.