Carpenter ants farming aphids
mehampson
Registered Users Posts: 137 Major grins
One of the things I like about shooting macro is that you often don't have to go far to find great opportunities. I found these carpenter ants tending to an aphid farm right in front of my apartment. The full gallery of a dozen images is on my website, and here are some samples.
Basically what's going on here is insect agriculture. The carpenter ants protect this herd of aphids from predators and harvest the sugar-rich honeydew they produce. They'll also cull any sick aphids from the herd.
There were three ants on this particular plant and about three hundred billion million aphids. Also a lot of frass, which just looks like aphid molts to me, and a green winged insect I've seen a few times nearby but haven't identified yet.
I also captured a pair of ants swapping their stomach contents via trophallaxis. One ant will come up to another and stroke her antennae and mouth; then the donor gives her a drop of regurgitated liquid. It's not entirely as gross as it sounds, since most ant species have a crop or 'social stomach' they use specifically for this purpose. And hey, at least it's stomodeal (mouth to mouth) trophallaxis... there are less appealing forms of this behavior
They do this to 'average out' the colony's food supply among its members, even the ones that don't forage for food, and to keep the colony's identifying odor consistent -- I think I've read that there's a social dominance thing going on with this as well, which wouldn't surprise me at all.
I know carpenter ants can be destructive (I just read about an 8' 2x4 that was so heavily tunneled by them that it weighed under two pounds!), but I do have a soft spot for all the social insects. You see such interesting and complex behavior in them.
Basically what's going on here is insect agriculture. The carpenter ants protect this herd of aphids from predators and harvest the sugar-rich honeydew they produce. They'll also cull any sick aphids from the herd.
There were three ants on this particular plant and about three hundred billion million aphids. Also a lot of frass, which just looks like aphid molts to me, and a green winged insect I've seen a few times nearby but haven't identified yet.
I also captured a pair of ants swapping their stomach contents via trophallaxis. One ant will come up to another and stroke her antennae and mouth; then the donor gives her a drop of regurgitated liquid. It's not entirely as gross as it sounds, since most ant species have a crop or 'social stomach' they use specifically for this purpose. And hey, at least it's stomodeal (mouth to mouth) trophallaxis... there are less appealing forms of this behavior
They do this to 'average out' the colony's food supply among its members, even the ones that don't forage for food, and to keep the colony's identifying odor consistent -- I think I've read that there's a social dominance thing going on with this as well, which wouldn't surprise me at all.I know carpenter ants can be destructive (I just read about an 8' 2x4 that was so heavily tunneled by them that it weighed under two pounds!), but I do have a soft spot for all the social insects. You see such interesting and complex behavior in them.
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Comments
I particularly like the first shot.
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