Hi,

I'm sorry if it's bad form to send pictures of dead creatures, but this particular one was acting belligerently in my bed, forcing my hand. I think I crushed its thorax in the act.

I encountered this insect while living in the central part northern Namibia, maybe 10km south of the Angolan border. I have no idea what it is. I've always wanted to learn more about it, and when I discovered this blog I thought it might be a place where I could get some guidance.

Can you identify this? Is it even an ant?

Thanks a lot,

Brent

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Brent,

No worries on bad form. Your inkling that this is not an ant was correct! This is a Solifugid, more commonly known as a sun spider, wind scorpion, or camel spider. Although it is an arachnid along with scorpions and spiders, most species of Solifugids do not have venom, and are not much danger to humans. The only thing you might want to watch out for is their powerful jaws, which they use to hunt ground-dwelling arthropods and other small animals.

Hope this helps!

Best,

Max Winston & the Ant Ask Team

Hello there,

I have a query about these ants we saw in our local park in Madrid, Spain. The ants themselves seemed fairly standard, with one nest hole, and a long line of foraging ants heading out to a nearby area and coming back with various tasty tidbits. As can be seen from the photo the ants were a number of different sizes.

However, amidst the ants were several white creatures (in the photo centre left, bottom right and the tail of one top left).

These looked nothing like ants, but appeared to be coexisting with them peaceably. They were going in and out of the ant hole, and were ignored by the ants. One or two travelled along the foraging line, but didn't appear to do any actual foraging. They were quite quick too, about as nimble as the ants.

Any information as to what these might be would be gratefully appreciated. My guesses would be a) some precursor ant stage (pupa or some such) b) other insect living symbiotically with the ant or c) I have no more ideas.

Many thanks!

David

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Hi David,

Your second guess is correct! The other insects in your photograph are in fact silverfish, cohabiting with the harvester ant Messor barbarus. There are many species of such myrmecophilous (or "ant-loving") Zygentoma around the world, with 16 occurring in the Iberian Peninsula alone. Unfortunately, without a clearer image, it is difficult to provide you with a more precise ID (several different species have been observed in Messor nests in particular), but based on a superficial diagnosis, they most likely belong to the genus Neoasterolepisma.

Silverfish are among a wide variety of other arthropods (including beetles, crickets, spiders, millipedes, even cockroaches) known to inhabit the nests of ants, either commensally or parasitically, and like other myrmecophiles, silverfish have evolved very successful strategies for avoiding detection by their ant hosts. While looking nothing like the ants, as you say, these scaly symbionts are able to blend in with the rest of the colony by rubbing against "callow" or immature workers and adopting the unique chemical profile that sister ants use to recognize one another. In this way, the silverfish enjoy easy access to shelter and resources within the nest and can intermingle freely with foragers on the outside (no doubt pilfering some of the tasty tidbits you observed being brought back to the harvester's granaries). Of course, this chemical disguise is only temporary, so the silverfish must also rely on another characteristic adaptation--speed--if their cover starts to fade, hence their nimble-footedness around the workers.

While some myrmecophilous silverfish are apparently highly specialized, demonstrating a preference for a single ant species, most are generalist interlopers, using their peculiar knack for chemical mimicry to infiltrate the subterranean strongholds of a variety of different ants. Another widespread Mediterranean silverfish species, Proatelurina pseudolepisma, for example, was found in the nests of a total of 13 different species of ants! Those of Messor barbarus, incidentally (the same species in your photograph) happened to be the most popular.

Hope this helps!

Alexandra Westrich & the AntAsk Team

We found these ants below in Anduki (Seria, Brunei):

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Hi Uli,

The ants pictured belong to the genus Cataulacus, a group of arboreal-nesting ants widely distributed across the Old World tropics. The exact species is likely Cataulacus latissimus, one of the more sizable of the dozen or so Indo-Australian species, known to occur in West Malaysia, Sumatra, Singapore, and of course Borneo.

Thanks for the photo,

Alexandra Westrich & the AntAsk Team

Dear Ant Blog,

All the photographs I see show ants using their mandibles like tongs. Can they rotate them like we can rotate our arms?

Katrina

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Dear Katrina,

Despite the fact that ants use their mandibles for a multitude of different functions including prey capture, manipulation, and escape, there are no ants that have been proven to have fully rotational mandibles. Humans have a ball-and-socket joint that allows great range of motion, and although ants have a ball-and-socket joint for their antennae, their mandibles usually have a single plane of motion. Although this limits range of motion, it allows for much greater strength.

In case you are interested in reading more about mandibles, Chris Schmidt wrote a basic introduction to mandibular function as a part of the Tree of Life project. There are also several academic papers that detail the movements of mandibles (see Jurgen Paul), as well as some of the most extreme mechanical "trap-jaws" that have been convergently evolved by several ant species.

Hope this answers your question!

Best,

Max Winston & the AntAsk Team

Hi,

We've had this ant problem for a long time now. There are these red ants about the length of a fingernail that inhibit a tree opposite our house across the road, they seem to be making a nest in the leaves or something. We usually park our car near the tree because there is limited space here (our neighbours including ourselves have 3 cars each). These ants are always found on the car but I've never considered them anything more than an annoyance. I'm only afraid that they might be inside the car while we're driving and my folks say they have a painful bite which scares me. Plus these ants are cannibalistic I think, I see them rushing to one of their own dead and picking them up back to their nest. When provoked they lift their torso and front 2 legs in some kind of intimidating pose. Today, we found a horde of them all over our car, many were dead due to a chemical smoke run conducted by the local town council to get rid of mosquitoes. What's next? The whole colony is going to come down and collect their dead? I quickly pulled a hose and washed away everything but those that were alive had really strong grip and won't budge even to strong water pressure, so I squashed them and in the process had some crawling up my legs.

Please tell me what to do if anything. I'm tired of it.

Thank you,
Joseph
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia
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Joseph,

It sounds like these ants are probably in the genus Oecophylla (pictured below), or more commonly known as weaver ants because they weave leaves together with larval silk to make their nests.

(Photo by Alexander Wild)

They are highly territorial, but even though they lack a functional sting, they can inflict painful bites and will spray formic acid in the bite wound to intensify the pain.They are probably sticking to your car due to a hairs on their feet that can stick to very smooth surfaces! As for collecting their dead, they are not cannibalistic, but they do take their dead back to a 'trash heap' near their nest. Ants are very tidy animals and communicate using pheromones, so when one ant dies, it emits a certain smell that indicates that it is no longer alive. To prevent any potential spread of disease, they gather their dead (similar to the way we collect and contain our waste).

You can read a bit more about weaver ants in this previous post:
http://www.antweb.org/antblog/2013/01/what-is-happening-in-this-photo-vidarshana.html

And more about the hygienic behaviors of ants here:
http://www.antweb.org/antblog/2010/08/do-ants-carry-away-dead-ants-tom-perris-ca.html

Good luck!

Gracen Brilmyer & the AntAsk Team

Hi,

I'm developing some educational materials on ecology for high school students in western Montana. As a small part of the project, I'd like to help the students to expand their idea of "population" to organisms other than human. So I am including information on the number of people (~91000), cattle (~13200), trees (~1.2 billion), bears (still waiting on that number), and would love to include an estimate of the number of ants! This is an area in northern Montana (Flathead County), mostly forested, some urban, and some agricultural... also some sagebrush steppe. Can you suggest a way for me to estimate the ant population within a couple of orders of magnitude? More than a trillion, perhaps? Any guidance would be welcome. Thank you!

Jane

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Dear Jane,

Thank you for contacting AntBlog. We are glad to hear you are including ants in your ecology high school materials. Your question is related to a question we addressed regarding biomass:

http://www.antweb.org/antblog/2010/10/do-ants-really-have-the-largest-biomass-of-all-species-on-earth-laurie-usa.html

In summary, estimating the number of ants alive right now in Flathead County, Montana is likely impossible. But, you if you assume that all the ants alive today in Flathead County weigh as much (and likely more since Montana has a low population density) than all the humans in Flathead County, Montana. So if you calculated the average weight of a human and multiplied it by the number of humans and then took that number and divided it by the average weight of an ant, this would give you an estimate for the number of ants alive today. Here is my back the envelope calculations of this formula using average adult weight (which is likely a bit to high for the average of all humans if you include non-adults) and an "average" weight for an ant (which varies immensely between ant species - think of calculating an average weight of mammals from species as small as mice to as large as elephants - that is the equivalent in the size ranges of ants):

Number of ants in Flathead County, Montana:
91000 humans x 150 lbs. average weight of a human = 13,650,000 lbs. of humans in Flathead County, Montana

1.5 mg (= 0.0000033069 lbs.) average weight of an ant

13,650,000 all human weight / 0.0000033069 single ant weight =

4,127,732,922,072 ants alive in Flathead County, Montana today

Number of ants on Earth:
If we do the same exercise for all the ants alive on the planet, here is what you get:
7,077,551,385 human on the planet x 150 lbs. average weight of a human = 1061632707750 lbs of humans on Earth

1.5 mg (= 0.0000033069 lbs.) average weight of an ant

1061632707750 all human weight / 0.0000033069 single ant weight =

321,035,624,829,901,000 ants alive on the planet today

That is a lot of ants!

On a related note, you might be interested in this blog post (and many others - feel free to read through them) on why ants are important in the environment for your ecology materials:

http://www.antweb.org/antblog/2012/08/what-good-are-ants-david-panama-city-florida-usa.html

Best regards,
Corrie Moreau & the AntAsk Team

Hi,
I've just read your web article about ant communication, which interests me. When I was a child in Africa I saw two species of ants fighting in my garden - small black ants (that we called sugar ants as they were always after the sugar!) and much larger red ants (about 7 - 8 times the size of the black ants and with a fearsome bite). The black ants were attacking the red ant nest at a distance of about (I have to estimate this, but based on a wide turning circle for cars) 15 - 20 yards. As I bent over the red ant hole watching the battle I saw them bringing their queen up to the surface. I picked the queen up and carried it to the black ant nest to see what would happen. For a little while nothing happened; the black and red ants at the red ant hole continued their battle, and the black ants around their hole ignored the red queen completely. Then one of them "spotted" the red queen, and within 10 seconds or so a host of them came boiling out of their nest and began dragging the queen down their hole. At exactly that moment the red ants gave up the fight and turned and "ran for it" away from the black soldier ants. Now there must have been some communication from the red queen to her soldier ants, presumably a distress call, and possibly also communication between the black ants - but across a distance of at least 15 yards. That communication was too fast to have passed between ants travelling between the two, and anyway they were all black ants. I assumed at the time it must have been chemical pheromones, but it carried across a fair distance given the size of the ants, and I wonder if anyone else has any experience of anything similar?

RDL of the U.K.

Hello RDL, and thank you for this inquiry.

Given that childhood memories can be a little treacherous, I'll still take a try to respond to this as best I can. My first thought is that perhaps you conflated the "sugar ants" (I'm guessing the common human-associated ant Paratrechina longicornis) that abounded where you live, with a less common, small, dark-colored ant that may have been one of the lesser army ant species that inhabit much of Africa (genus Aenictus). Unlike the larger and more famous driver ants of the genus Dorylus, Aenictus workers are closer to a uniform size and lack the large-headed, saber-toothed soldier caste. These ants feed primarily on other ants' brood, and may also carry home stunned, live adults to be consumed by their colonies. I think that's the behavior you observed.

Okay, that was just guessing, but this part will be more based in science. Regarding your pheromone question, I think it may rest on the common, anthropomorphizing misconception that the queen is a sovereign that "rules" the colony. While it is true that the queen health and reproductiive state influence the health and behavior of the colony, she does not in any literal sense tell the colony, nor any individuals within the group, what to do. The presence of the queen in the nest is thought to be sensed by pheromones disseminated through the colony. Likewise, her absence is eventually sensed in the colony by the decrease, and finally, complete lack of her pheromones being spread through the population. It is possible that the colony of larger ants that was attacked by the smaller black ants sensed that their queen had gone missing, but I deem it rather more likely that their behavior was something apart, more on the order of an alarm/panic response to the invasion itself, and had nothing to do with the queen's presence, absence, or attempts to communicate with her daughter workers. It is not concurrent with what we know about ant communication by pheromones that a "distress call" was sent out, certainly not one that could be detected at a distance of 50 feet away by the workers. A common feature of the physical chemistry of fast-acting pheromones is that they diffuse very rapidly, and over very short distances, to the point where they quickly become no longer at suffcient concentration to elicit a response. Further, no ant seems to be able to aim peromones in a particular direction, least of all at 50 feet distance. On the other hand, ant colonies not uncommonly have an panic escape respone to invasion by army ants, or even to any other sort of ant that invade their nest em>en masse.

Best regards, James C. Trager of the Ask Ant Team

Hello Antweb,
I've been doing some research on ant species richness and was wondering what locality is considered to have the highest species richness and if there is any literature to back up this information, thanks!

Hi Alejandro,

Ant diversity is highest at low latitudes (the tropics) and drops off towards the poles. This is a common phenomenon among many groups of organisms and Terry McGlynn has a relatively accessible piece about it here. This website is also a great way to explore the distribution of ant genera across the world. There is quite a bit of literature on the subject including, but certainly not limited to, the references listed below and the citations therein. The book "Ant Ecology", listed first in the below references, is a great overview of many ant related subjects, including their geographic distribution.

Thanks for your question,
Ben Rubin & the AntAsk Team

References:
Dunn RR, Guénard, B, Weiser, MD & Sanders, NJ. 2010. Geographic gradients. In Ant Ecology (eds. L. Lach, C.L. Parr & K.L. Abbott) pp. 38-58. Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Guénard B, Weiser MD & Dunn RR. 2012. Global mode ls of ant diversity suggest regions where new discoveries are most likely are under disproportionate deforestation threat. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 109: 7368-7373.

Kaspari M, Ward PS & Yuan M. 2004. Energy gradients and the geographic distribution of local ant diversity. Oecologia 140: 407-413.

Kusnezov N. 1957. Numbers of species of ants in faunae of different latitudes. Evolution 11: 298-299.

Jeanne RL. 1979. A latitudinal gradient in rates of ant predation. Ecology 60: 1211-1224.

Jenkins CN, Sanders NJ, Andersen AN, Arnan X, Brühl CA, Cerda X, Ellison AM, Fisher BL, Fitzpatrick MC, Gotelli NJ, Gove AD, Guénard B, Lattke JE, Lessard J-P, Mcglynn TP, Menke SB, Parr CL, Philpott SM, Vasconcelos HL, Weiser MD & Dunn RR. 2011. Global diversity in light of climate change: the case of ants. Diversity and Distributions 17: 652-662.

Hey, AntAnswerers!

So, I've been thinking a bit about the situation with trophic eggs in ants. It apparently seems a pretty common practice among ant queens to eat some of their unembryonated eggs. Fair enough.
What I don't understand is the energetics of this practice- calorie for calorie, wouldn't it be costing a queen more to produce these trophic eggs than she is gaining from eating them?
I could understand making the best of a bad situation (i.e., for other arthropods that overshoot the optimal number of offspring, cannibalism retrieves some of the calories from a previous, poor decision), but I'm not sure that kind of argument applies for ants. Any thoughts from you guys?

I am similarly confused about the energetics of dracula ants, for similar reasons (i.e., the food comes from within the "extended phenotype").

Many thanks!
-Mark

Dear Mark,

Typically, trophic eggs are unfertilized eggs laid by workers and used predominantly to feed larvae and queens but can also be fed to other workers. This type of resource sharing is similar to the regurgitation (trophallaxis) that occurs frequently between ants that you may be more familiar with.

Queens can also produce trophic eggs and new foundresses often use these to feed their young larvae. They certainly could eat these themselves and they may be useful as a way of storing food until it is needed, but most are fed to their offspring.

Also, larvae do sometimes cannibilize other larvae as you mention. This system of feeding larvae may or may not be optimal for the colony but it undoubtedly benefits the larval aggressors.

Dracula ants are incapable of consuming solid foods because their mouthparts are not built for chewing. The larvae, however, can consume and digest these foods, producing a resource rich hemolymph. Many ant colonies operate in this way, indirectly feeding on the digestive capabilities of the larvae. Dracula ants are special because the larvae do not have the ability to regurgitate nutrients and must, therefore, be bitten open by the workers. Larvae of most other species are perfectly capable of regurgitation so this complicated method of sharing resources is not necessary.

Great question!
Ben Rubin & the AntAsk Team

How difficult, if possible, is it to transfer an ant colony from a small easy maintenance starter farm to a much larger farm. Also how big would my farm have to be to have a full colony of pavement without 'controlling' population size? I can build one as big as I need. And what are the chances that my pavement ant colony will have more than one queen producing, I read that they will sometimes have more than one producing queen per colony. I think it would be very interesting to watch a multi queen colony.

Thank you so much,
Justin

Dear Justin,

It should not be too difficult to transfer your colony to a new farm, though you will probably lost some individuals in the process. Take a look at our previous post here.

I doubt that there will be any need to "control" the population size. The colony will grow until it is mature or runs out of resources so keep it well fed and it should be fine. Pavement ant colonies can grow to tens of thousands of workers so if you want your colony to reach its maximum possible size, you should probably make the farm rather large. Be sure to take a look at this previous post for tips on building a habitat.

Steiner et al. (2003) found multiple queens in five of 35 pavement ant colonies collected, so it is certainly possible that your colony contains multiple queens. Although you may need to do some more whole colony collecting if you are determined to find this type of colony.

Good luck with the farm!
Ben Rubin & the AntAsk Team

References:
Steiner FM, Schlick-Steiner BC, Buschinger A. 2003. First record of unicolonial polygyny in Tetramorium cf. caespitum (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). Insectes Sociaux 50: 98-99.