Leafy Lodge!
This weaver ant might be doing some housekeeping job out of its nest.
Weaver Ants are those ants with reddish long bodies and very long legs that construct their nests by getting leaves together neatly. Multiple leaves are held together with the white fibers. Queen ant lays eggs on surface of these leaves internally and the pupa grows up in the shady cool place. This is how the weaver ant's nest looks like. This is a smaller specimen with two or three leaves woven together, but there are larger ones where four or more leaves are also strung together.
The ants do not have silk, but their larva does. However, larva cannot move around. So, the worker ants carry larva around and the little one spins enough silk to keep the leaves together as a house.
Oecophylla smaragdina is widespread in the Old World tropics and are present the most sophisticated nest-building activities of all weaver ants.The weaver ant (O. smaragdina) is a dominant canopy ant in tropical India and Australasia with colonies of up to 500 000 ants housed in nests made of leaves fastened together by larval silk and scattered across tens of trees. Workers draw leaves together, often forming long chains, and glue them together with larval silk. The colonies are very large and highly polydomous. Queens are pre-dominantly though not exclusively once-mated and colonies are usually single-queened, but most Northern Territory (Australia) colonies are polygynous. The workers are highly polymorphic (seen also in a fossilized colony), show complex polyethism, and present a much-studied rich pheromonal repertoire for the colony's tasks. Colony odor is partly learned, showing a "nasty neighbor" effect in reactions to other colonies of this highly territorial ant, and partly intrinsic to each individual. The odor varies over time and differs between the nests of a colony. Not surprisingly, Oecophylla ants are hosts to a variety of inquilines, such as spiders, which mimic the colony odor to escape detection. In addition, a constellation of Homoptera benefit from ant protection, yet the activities of the ants in controlling pest species make these ants beneficial insects (they are also human food in some areas) (adapted from Crozier et al., 2010). Reference: taxo4254.wikispaces.com/Oecophylla+smaragdina
Leafy Lodge!
This weaver ant might be doing some housekeeping job out of its nest.
Weaver Ants are those ants with reddish long bodies and very long legs that construct their nests by getting leaves together neatly. Multiple leaves are held together with the white fibers. Queen ant lays eggs on surface of these leaves internally and the pupa grows up in the shady cool place. This is how the weaver ant's nest looks like. This is a smaller specimen with two or three leaves woven together, but there are larger ones where four or more leaves are also strung together.
The ants do not have silk, but their larva does. However, larva cannot move around. So, the worker ants carry larva around and the little one spins enough silk to keep the leaves together as a house.
Oecophylla smaragdina is widespread in the Old World tropics and are present the most sophisticated nest-building activities of all weaver ants.The weaver ant (O. smaragdina) is a dominant canopy ant in tropical India and Australasia with colonies of up to 500 000 ants housed in nests made of leaves fastened together by larval silk and scattered across tens of trees. Workers draw leaves together, often forming long chains, and glue them together with larval silk. The colonies are very large and highly polydomous. Queens are pre-dominantly though not exclusively once-mated and colonies are usually single-queened, but most Northern Territory (Australia) colonies are polygynous. The workers are highly polymorphic (seen also in a fossilized colony), show complex polyethism, and present a much-studied rich pheromonal repertoire for the colony's tasks. Colony odor is partly learned, showing a "nasty neighbor" effect in reactions to other colonies of this highly territorial ant, and partly intrinsic to each individual. The odor varies over time and differs between the nests of a colony. Not surprisingly, Oecophylla ants are hosts to a variety of inquilines, such as spiders, which mimic the colony odor to escape detection. In addition, a constellation of Homoptera benefit from ant protection, yet the activities of the ants in controlling pest species make these ants beneficial insects (they are also human food in some areas) (adapted from Crozier et al., 2010). Reference: taxo4254.wikispaces.com/Oecophylla+smaragdina