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On a recent trip to the Hassayampa River Preserve, we ran across a number of harvester ant mounds, particularly those of Pogonomyrmex barbatus. I examined the refuse piles, or middens, to see what the ants had been gathering. Pogonomyrmex barbatus typically gather seeds and their middens reflect that. The larger ovoid seeds caught my eye, because I knew [...] You can tell a lot about a society by what its members throw away. Take these harvester ants, for example. Your eye might be attracted by the flurry of activity around the nest entrance. It does pay to look elsewhere, though. Here’s the trash heap. Looks like these ants have been gathering a lot of Isopods, otherwise known as [...] Over at my Growing with Science blog I have been doing a long-running series about insects called Bug of the Week, as well as a series about identifying seeds, called Seed of the Week. “Ant of the Week” seems to be inevitable. So, without further ado, our first Ant of the Week is Messor pergandei. These [...] Remember the post a few weeks back showing the snail shells in the harvester ant midden? Let’s take a little closer look at what kinds of objects harvester ants collect and put on their mounds. At first glance a harvester ant mound looks a bit like a pile of rubble. If you start to study the mound, [...] |
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