If you are going to be in Arizona this month, and you are interested in social insects, plan a trip to the Social Insect Expo at the Desert Botanical Garden on February 20, 2010. According to the program, there will be live colonies of leafcutter ants, honey bees, harvester ants, trap-jaw ants, and more. The expo will also feature a presentation by Ray Mendez, who has worked with insects in movies and design. The event begins 6 p.m., with a talk at 7:30 p.m. The admission is free and the public is invited.
This is the concluding event for the Social Biomimicry: Insect Societies and Human Design conference, which is being held February 18-20, 2010 at the Arizona State University Memorial Union, Tempe Campus. Unfortunately, registration is already closed for the conference.
With Mark Moffett coming in March and this Social Insect Expo in February, Arizona is abuzz with awesome events. Hope to see you there!
Any ideas what the yellow dots are on this Passiflora leaf? Are insects involved?
It turns out that insects are part of the story, but probably not in the way that you might think.
This is one of the insect characters, the larva of a Heliconius butterfly. The female butterfly lays yellow eggs on passion vine plants, mostly in the tropics. The larvae consume a great deal of the plant before pupating.
In Arizona, another species can wipe out passion vines.
This is the larva of the gulf fritillary butterfly, Agraulis vanillae.
Researchers have shown the yellow spots on the leaves are made by the plants as a defense against these butterflies. When the butterflies lay eggs, they avoid laying on plants where another female has already deposited eggs. The yellow spots mimic eggs and thus fool the butterflies into going elsewhere.
That is only part of the story, however, because the yellow spots serve another purpose. Those are nectaries, glands that produce nectar. The free source of food attracts ants, which in turn defend the plant against any butterfly larvae that do hatch.
I have to say that at first glance the plant fooled me too. Did it fool you? Did you think those were insect eggs?
The theme today for Life Photo Meme at Adventures of a Free Range Urban Primate blog is “honor an invertebrate.” Why not ants that protect plants?
If you are interested in invertebrates, you should go visit the Circus of the Spineless Blog Carnival #47, now up at Beetles in the Bush. Ted MacRae has done an awesome job organizing and summarizing the posts.
We have been inspired by books lately. In the last post, our inspiration was an adult-level book about katydids. Today it is the children’s picture book Little Black Ant on Park Street by Janet Halfmann and Illustrated by Kathleen Rietz. The book is the next installment in the excellent Smithsonian’s Backyard series. I reviewed the book at my Wrapped in Foil blog and putting up related hands on activities for children on my Growing With Science blog, but here I’d like to take a look at the biology of the species.
The little black ant, Monomorium minimum, is a relatively tiny species, native to North America.
The workers are black, uniform in size and only about 1/16th of an inch long (1.5 mm). The petiole has two segments.
Monomorium minimum belongs to the tribe Solenopsdini. The workers have antennae with a three-segmented club. Their fire ant relatives have a two-segmented club.
Unlike the stereotypical ant colonies with only one queen, colonies of little black ants often contain multiple queens.
Monomorium minimum workers feed on honeydew, and scavenge dead insects and other arthropods, usually during the warmest part of the day. When foragers find a suitable item, they recruit nest mates by releasing a pheromone. Once recruited, groups of workers cut up larger items or cart away smaller ones.
As described in the book, when workers of M. minimum run into other ant species that scavenge dead arthropods, the minimum workers raise their gasters, vibrate and release poison gland secretions to chase away any rival ants. This behavior is called “gaster flagging.”
Here’s a short video of gaster flagging in another species.
For a little ant, they pack a big punch. Monomorium minimum colonies can invade imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, colonies and take over.
Given that these little ants are so interesting and relatively widespread and common, I’m surprised how little information I was able to find on them. Perhaps this new children’s book will spark some scientific inquiry by the next generation of myrmecologists.
Eldridge S. Adams and James F. A. Traniello. 1981. Chemical interference competition by Monomorium minimum (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Oecologia. Volume 51, Number 2 / January, 1981. pdf available
are interested in social insects, plan a trip to the Social Insect Expo at the Desert Botanical Garden on February 20, 2010. According to the program, there will be live colonies of leafcutter ants, honey bees, harvester ants, trap-jaw ants, and more. The expo will also feature a presentation by Ray Mendez, who has worked with insects in movies and design. The event begins 6 p.m., with a talk at 7:30 p.m. The admission is free and the public is invited.
