Virtual Presentation About Ants for the General Public

If you are new to ants, you might enjoy this delightful presentation by ant enthusiast Merav sponsored by the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority.

She discusses a bit of ant biology, with an emphasis on ant nests. I particularly enjoyed some of the questions from the “audience.”

I’m supposed to give a presentation about insects (with some ants, of course) in January. I’m hoping it will be in person by then.  If not, this might be a fun alternative.

Have you seen any virtual presentations about ants recently? Are they available for public viewing?

Featured Myrmecologist: Dr. Kaitlin M. Baudier

Today we’re featuring Kaitlin M. Baudier, PhD who is currently a post doc in the Social Insect Research Group at Arizona State University.

Dr. Baudier is the creative force behind the AntGirl YouTube Channel. Check it out, particularly the ant playlist.

To give you an idea of her content, here’s her video of a Pogonomyrmex barbatus mating swarm.

Isn’t that incredible? Being close to a social insect swarm is an amazing experience. I hope to see a full blown harvester ant mating swarm like this one some day.

What else does she work on?

Besides social insect swarm aggression research, she also studies tropical ecology and animal behavior. She has some great videos of tropical species, like the ants versus stingless bees.

Ever seen those odd tubercles on ponerine larvae?  (If not, the Mississippi Entomological Museum has a close up of an Ponera pensylvanica larva here.) Dr. Baudier is also interested in studying their evolution throughout the subfamily ‎Ponerinae. Take a look at her poster about “sticky fingers.”

If you’d like to learn more, visit her website.

Did I mention she’s also an artist?

Ants Tending the Aster Hopper, Publilia concava

Time to knock the cobwebs off this blog with some new posts. Let’s start by taking a look at ants tending the aster hopper, Publilia concava.

This species of treehopper is relatively easy to find because the nymphs feed in aggregations on the underside of goldenrod leaves (Solidago altissima).

The relationship between ants and aster hoppers is a mutualism. The ants guard the treehoppers and drive away predators. In this case the ants were Formica sp.

In return, the nymphs supply food for the ants in the form of liquid honeydew. In the center of the photograph the nymph has curled its tubular abdomen to present food to the ant.

The adult female treehoppers lay their eggs in clusters and guard them until they hatch. Then the worker ants take over. In a recent study, Morales and Zink found adult female treehoppers with ants tending them were more likely to lay eggs than untended ones. At one site the researchers discovered egg laying per treehopper actually increases with the number of worker ants nearby.

If you’ve never watched ants tending aster hoppers, here’s a short video. (Unfortunately, the lighting conditions weren’t ideal and there was a breeze.).

You might think that the treehopper nymphs, as phloem feeders, would be rather sessile, but the nymphs move around more than you might expect. Morales and Zink suggest that treehoppers may respond to density of conspecifics as well as ants.

In any case, the relationship between aster hoppers and ants is an interesting one.

Have you ever seen aster hoppers tended by ants?

Reference:

Morales MA, Zink AG (2017) Mechanisms of aggregation in an ant-tended treehopper: Attraction to mutualists is balanced by conspecific competition
PLOS ONE 12(7): e0181429. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181429

Morales, 2002. Ant-dependent oviposition in the membracid Publilia concava. Ecological Entomology. 27:  247-250. (download .pdf)

Previous post about the treehopper on thistle, Entylia carinata

Video: See Leafcutter Ants in Action

The Washington Post has a new video this week featuring Ted Schultz, research entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History.

The peculiarity of ant farmers at the National Museum of Natural History (video link). Note:  Sorry, the next video in the series autoplays when this one is done unless you stop it.

The video accompanies an article by Sarah Kaplan, “These strange, subterranean cities are eerily like our own. But they’re ruled by ants.”

atta1-alex-wild-public-domainPublic Domain Photograph of a Leafcutter Ant Fungus Garden by Alex Wild.

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