Tag: Ant Nests

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Insect Architects: Mining iNaturalist for Information

You’ve probably all discovered the iNaturalist app years ago, but I just started playing around with some of its capabilities.

For example, I’m interested in ant nests. The shape of the nest can sometimes help with identification. It is also fascinating to see what insects are capable of building.

Check out this cecropia ant nest, Genus Azteca.

© Nelson Wisnik, some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC)

It does lead to questions, such as where are the ants  and what is the nest made of?

Here’s a similar public domain image from Wikimedia by Alex Wild. It is from from a guayaba tree in Archidona, Ecuador.

These nests are made of carton, which may be  either wood particles, soil, and/or trichomes mixed with fungal mycelium.  So cool!

Mayer, V. E., & Voglmayr, H. (2009). Mycelial carton galleries of Azteca brevis (Formicidae) as a multi-species network. Proceedings. Biological Sciences, 276(1671), 3265–3273. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2009.0768

AntWiki is a great place to start if you want to learn more about Azteca.

The next nest doesn’t look like an ant nest at all. It looks like a piece of pottery.

© Chief RedEarth at iNaturalist
Cc by nc nd small some rights reserved

It seems impossible that ants made this structure, but you can see ants in the photograph. They are tiny specks in the center opening. The ants have been identified as Pheidole sykesii or the Indian harvester ant.

This video shows how small the ants are relative to the structure.

 

Alex Wild at Myrmecos has a post about it, too (see the comments).

What do you think of iNaturalist? Do you use it regularly?

Below is a collection of amazing insect nests.

iNaturalist


View more observations from Discovering Natural Architects on iNaturalist»
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Ant Nests Under Rocks

Recently, during International Rock Flipping Day, several of the participants found ants under rocks. See for example, Fertanish Chatter found some golden yellow ants, and Just Playin’ Around found black ants with larvae and pupae. Here is a list of all the Rock Flipping participants.

When I flipped a rock in northern Arizona last week, I found these ants with the eggs and larvae.

ants-under-rocks

Why do you think ants live under rocks? I have noticed they often have piles of eggs, larvae and pupae under rocks, particularly in cold climates. Do you think perhaps the rocks warm the ground and they are using them as heaters to keep the young ants warm?

Because they often live underground, we might not give as much thought to the nests constructed by ants. Dr. Walter Tschinkel has modified an older technique for looking at the structure of ant nests by pouring dental plaster into the tunnels, allowing it to dry and then digging up the nest, giving a negative-space impression of some truly impressive ant nests.

Dr. Walter Tschinkel’s Ant Castles can be found at the Florida State University. He’s says that the ants can build the huge one at the bottom in just five days!