Daily Devotional – March 22

Botany

Mangrove trees live alongside the ocean where their roots are flooded by salty ocean water. You would not expect ants, which build their home underground, to build nests in such a wet location. Believe it or not, some ants (Polyrhachis sokolova) thrive within Australia’s mangrove swamps. They build their cities deep into the mud some 18 inches below a mangrove tree. Twice a day, at high tide, their city is flooded!

The ants have designed their mound with two entrances that collapse at high tide - plugging the entrances and ensuring the safety of the ants inside. When seawater does leak into the underground tunnels, the ants scurry around moving their eggs and brood to different galleries. The bell-shaped galleries ensure that air is trapped, saving the ants from drowning. When the water recedes at low tide, the ants repair their city and others hunt small crustaceans on the mud flats. Two times a day…seven days a week…365 days a year, the ants repair their entrances and go hunting! Why would ants choose to live in such a way? It would be much easier to build their city in a place not covered with seawater twice a day. They did not choose it. God designed them to survive and thrive in this location.

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.

~ Proverbs 6:6-8

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.