Ant observations

While poking around the great outdoors, I noticed one particularly large ant nest, maybe a foot wide with half a dozen entrance holes.the ants were medium sized, dull black or grey in color. I later recognized them as being of the genus Formica. After further inspection of the nest, I noticed the shriveled corpses of a much smaller ant littering a few of the uppermost tunnels. I searched around for the victim nest, but found nothing until the next day.
The nest in a question was much more modest than the former, measuring only a couple inches wide, with but a single entrance hole. A lone, large-headed soldier patrolled just outside the mound. The Formica ants must have been raiding this newly emerging colony, and the small colony was doing it's best to defend itself with it's limited population. I later identified the bigger ants as Formica glacialis, and the smaller ants, unmistakable as Pheidole because of the shape and size of their heads, as Pheidole pilifera

Publicado el 17 de mayo de 2011 a las 10:36 PM por