 Anthills... as far as the eye can see in the Parc jurassien vaudois.
Good shoes, a picnic slung over your shoulder, and you are ready to discover the wood ant colony in Chalet-à-Roch. It's probably not the largest concentration of wood ants in the world but it is the largest known in Europe, and the fruit of lots of research.
Regarding anthills, you should know that these domes made of twigs can attain 1.5 m in height and are often located at the edge of wooded plots or in small glades.
Sometimes located underground, with built-in ventilation systems, anthills can house anywhere from 20 to 5,000,000 ants. At the centre, protected by the workers, is the queen, who lays up to 500 eggs a day.
There are nurseries in the anthill, with eggs, larva, nymphs and cocoons looked after by nursemaids who attach the greatest importance to their charges.
According to the species of ant, there can also be giant mushrooms, grown and consumed by the ants, where aphids live, protected and fed in exchange for their honeydew, a sweet liquid flowing out of their abdomen.
Since 1966, the federal law on the protection of nature and the landscape protects all the species of wood ants in Switzerland. The protection of wood ants was decided as a means of protecting the forests. Several other countries, such as Germany and Austria, also decided to protect these insects. In Italy, anthills were even transplanted as a means of biological pest control, an action that would merit up-to-date scientific study.
Another feature of the Parc is its dry stone walls (67 km of low walls) that were built to demarcate its boundaries and contain its livestock. Inseparable from the Jura landscape, they are often more than a hundred years old and constitute a heritage which is worth protecting.
www.parc-jurassien.ch
Photo : Monique Grange-Haehl
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