Dracula ants (Adetomyrma venatrix)

Species information

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Threats

The precise threats facing this recently discovered species are unknown, but the dramatic growth of Madagascar’s human population and associated residential, agricultural and industrial development are known to be having a severe detrimental effect on the country’s forest habitat (6). Thus, habitat loss is likely to play an important role in the decline of these ants, as it has with many of the island’s other endemic fauna.

Conservation

Entomologist Dr. Fisher of the California Academy of Sciences, who first discovered an entire colony of Dracula ants in 2001, has moved a few colonies into a laboratory environment (6). This not only allows the species to be studied in greater depth, but also serves as a buffer against total extinction. Indeed, it is feared that these relics of an earlier stage of evolution may disappear from the wild completely in less than a decade (6).