The industrial practice of a group of students from the Institute of Biology and Biotechnology at Altai State University proved to be highly productive: with their participation, the ant species Myrmica vandeli Bondroit, 1920 was recorded in the Tigirek Reserve. This species had previously been unknown not only in Altai Krai but also throughout Russia.
In 2024, third-year students Maria Silchenko, Valeria Krasnova, and Elizaveta Petrova completed their summer internship in the Tigirek Reserve. Their tasks included documenting ant nests. Elizaveta Petrova explained:
“We used the site method: we selected a 5 by 5-meter area and examined the soil to locate ant nests. When we found any, we collected several individuals in test tubes for further analysis. This is how we happened to discover a rare ant species. We will definitely include this work in our diploma theses — for example, my research focuses on the species composition and biotopic distribution of ants (Formicidae) in the low-mountain forest-steppe of the Tigirek Nature Reserve.”
The students worked closely with the reserve’s senior researcher, Tatyana Krugova. Tatyana emphasizes that studying soil-dwelling insects is a very labor-intensive process, so the opportunity to collaborate with students is highly valuable for the scientists:
“The students are usually very interested and responsible in their work, and we can rely on them. With their assistance, we manage to achieve interesting and valuable results and carry out research at the required scale. I have been working at the reserve since 2008, and almost every year, students from Altai State University join us — more frequently in recent years. Although it is not easy: you need to stay here for at least a week, living almost without communication or shops — we only provide accommodation. You have to walk a lot around the reserve and maintain good physical fitness. The weather conditions vary: heat, rain. Overall, those who come to us are definitely not come-and-go people!”
Ants of the Myrmica vandeli species were discovered five thousand kilometers from their main range, in the Northwestern Altai, specifically in the Tigirek Reserve on the left bank of the Bolshoy Tigirek. The environment there is ideal for these ants: the southern slope is well warmed by the sun, and the moss retains moisture, making it one of the most ant-rich areas in the reserve. As reported by the reserve, it was believed that M. vandeli inhabited only the Western Palearctic region — Europe and possibly Türkiye — extending eastward to Ukraine. The species was first described in France in the early 20th century, with no new findings until the 1950s, when it began to be found in other European countries. Tatyana Krugova notes: "The ant fauna of the temperate latitudes of Eurasia has been studied quite well overall, and it is quite uniform throughout this vast territory. Therefore, such finds are quite rare in myrmecological studies, this is a success."
Myrmica vandeli exhibits facultative social parasitism during colony founding. The female M. vandeli infiltrates the nest of another ant species, usually Myrmica scabrinodis, kills the host queen, and lays her own eggs. The workers of M. scabrinodis then care for the parasite's offspring as their own. Over time, the host workers die off and are replaced by M. vandeli workers, who eventually sustain the colony independently.
According to Tatyana Krugova, studying ants gives scientists an understanding of many processes occurring in nature.
"Firstly, it is essential to understand who inhabits this region: myrmecologists have studied no more than 15% of the Altai-Khangai-Sayan mountain area. Secondly, we conduct quantitative surveys to determine which species are abundant and which are scarce, identifying the areas where each species thrives. This allows us to analyze the relationship between ant distribution and environmental heterogeneity. The reserve's territory is particularly well-suited for such research due to its mountainous terrain, highly varied conditions, and diverse landscape structure, all of which provide opportunities for population differentiation to occur. Finally, if the climate begins to change, species distribution patterns will also shift, enabling us to observe how climate change impacts animal populations. We are already monitoring these changes, which so far have primarily affected rare species."
For such research in the reserve, collaboration with the university is one of the keys to success.
"Once, Irina Kudryashova, an associate professor in the Zoology Department at ASU, sent me to do my internship at the reserve," says Tatyana Krugova. "Now, I myself supervise her students during their time at the reserve, and we conduct joint research together — the discovery of M. vandeli is just one example of such collaboration. Subsequently, some of these interns join us as colleagues. Of course, the scientific department of the reserve is staffed almost exclusively by graduates of Altai State University, thanks to our home university!"