[DuskStar]

I suppose I should be sitting up in terror for the superbug that comes after us from ants, then? After all ants outmass humans worldwide by a decent margin...

Thing is, I'm pretty sure that ants and humans are only a few times further apart than potatoes and corn are. (Monocots and Dicots split ~140-150 Myr ago [0], Arthropoda and Chordata about ~1000 Myr ago [1]) (I initially thought the Monocots/Dicots split was further back... looks like a closer comparison would be to marsupials, diverging ~170 Myr ago)

0: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15114421

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10097391

[topmonk]

What does the number of ants vs humans have to do with the population of a species ballooning 1 million times its original size?