It rained last night and it was about 40° F this morning, so I had trouble finding insects to photograph.
I did find something in this decomposing grapefruit:
rover ants.
Nothing ever seems to faze rover ants.
Seems like ants have taken a back seat to other things this year. Regardless, here are a few of my favorite photographs from 2014.
Even missing a leg, a Pogonomyrmex warrior is ready to defend her nest.
Not sure what these Solenopsis workers are finding so interesting on rush milkweed buds.
Sometime I wasn’t intending to feature ants. For example, I was more interested in the delicate Thurber’s cotton flower than the rover ant visiting the nectary.
Like other cotton plants, the Thurber’s cotton also has extrafloral nectaries that attract ants.
Nothing is more exciting than finding princess ants about to swarm after the first rains of summer.
How about Messor pergandei taken at my favorite place to visit ants? (A good place to look for ants if you don’t mind dodging mountain bikes, that is. )
Do you have an end-of-the-year post of nature photographs? Feel free to share your link in the comments.
I was going to take a photograph of a desert willow flower for another of my blogs, when I noticed some ant activity.
Forelius worker ants were all over one cluster of flowers.
As far as I could tell, they were only visiting this one cluster out of probably fifty nearby.
It would have been interesting to find out more, but I had to run (story of my life).
I have seen Forelius streaming up and down trees. They seem to forage in crowds.
What do you think?