It's a modest new year's resolution of mine to make more of the bountiful resource that is BBC's iPlayer. Thanks to a tip-off from my folks, this was kicked off with last night's Swarm: Nature's Incredible Invasions: When Worlds Collide (baffling double-colon reproduced verbatim; watchable till 19 Jan 2009). Narrated by David Tennant, this nature documentary "reveals the awe-inspiring world of animal swarms", using a wide range of footage including aerial footage from within insect and bird flocks to illustrate its point.

Given that the subject matter is of such interest to me, it was a disappointing way to begin my iPlayer experience: in both tone and focus, it bore more resemblance to a US car-chase shock-doc than to the informative Attenborough fare that is more the norm for the BBC. Tossing aside any biological insights, it was merely a catalogue of the devastation that swarms can wreak on man and nature, albeit with some highly impressive film and stats to back it up -- one particularly striking scene showed amateur video of an Australian farmer lifting up a piece of corrugated iron to reveal a heaving throng of thousands of mice, like woodlice under a particularly large rock. Why not discuss the complex communications the determine the movements of killer bees, rather than just whacking on some gory footage of bee stings? Why not mention, even in passing, the stunning and unlikely evolutionary advantage given by the 17-year cycle of periodic cicada breeding? Here's hoping that next week's followup provides more in the way of factual background.

One feature that I did enjoy -- and another that it shared with the aforementioned US cop shows -- was its extensive use of amateur video, including mobile phone and camcorder footage of suburban infestations, accompanied by token doltish mumblings ("See that tree right there? It has.. lots and lots of cicadas on it."). It also featured the great sight of an endless stream of cars ploughing over a highway strewn with migrating land crabs. Yet, to really hammer home the point that this is AMATEUR FOOTAGE, the production company saw fit to superimpose illusory phone facias onto the wobbly video. Why?!

Fortify your gardens: BBC News reports (based upon this paper) that a novel ultra-invasive ant species, Lasius neglectus, is soon to strike the cold temperate climes of Northern Europe. This new strain is creating supercolonies that are orders of magnitude greater than existing colonies, based on the seemingly counter-evolutionary development of a flightless queen, alongside workers that are willing to mate within their colony rather than first taking flight to pastures new. Moreover, it's a relatively unaggressive form, constituted by "a social system that is characterized by mating without dispersal and large networks of cooperating nests rather than smaller mutually hostile colonies".

As a consequence, it's exhibiting self-organization on a staggering (and somewhat frightening) scale, resulting in single vast populations that inexorably expand outwards. Courtesy of human transport to locations that lack natural parasites (cite, PDF), Lasius neglectus has begun to blanket central Europe over the course of just 25 years.

The authors conclude that:

"Our results show that invasive L. neglectus populations are a potential problem of global dimensions, and a particular threat for man-made ecosystems in the cold-temperate climate zones that have so far suffered very little from invasive ants."

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.