View allAll Photos Tagged weaverant
Defense
Ants attack others and defend themselves by biting and in many species, stinging, often injecting chemicals like formic acid. Bullet ants (the genus Paraponera), located in Central and South America, are considered to have the most painful sting among insects, although these are usually non-fatal. They are given the highest rating on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Jack jumper ants, Myrmecia pilosula, located in Australia have stings that may kill the small proportion of susceptible people in the population, and cause hospitalizations each year. A vaccine based on use of the venom extract to develop immunity has been developed.
Fire ants, Solenopsis spp., are unique in having a poison sac containing piperidine alkaloids.
Some ants of the genus Odontomachus are equipped with mandibles called trap-jaws. This snap-jaw mechanism, or catapult mechanism, is possible because energy is stored in the large closing muscles. The blow is incredibly fast, about 0.5 ms in the genus Mystrium. Before the strike, the mandibles open wide and are locked in the open position by the labrum, which functions as a latch. The attack is triggered by stimulation of sensory hairs at the side of the mandibles. The mandibles are also able to function as a tool for more finely adjusted tasks. Two similar groups are Odontomachus and Dacetini - examples of convergent evolution.
A weaver ant in fighting position, mandibles wide open.
The weaver ants are another notable aspect of the forest. A group was initially observed crawling on the ekki tree shown earlier. They discouraged any thought of climbing or tree-hugging for selfie shots.
Seeing the hard, collaborative work this group were up to on a plant along the forest path, I was obliged to give them some recognition by documenting the scene.
Weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) vs black ant (Diacamma sp.). Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
More tropical ants: orionmystery.blogspot.com/2012/04/tropical-ants.html
A pair of Weaver Ants in Pasir Ris Park Mangroves.
Explore with me in my blog: A Return To Pasir Ris Park and Mangrove Forest
*Note: More pics of Insects and Arachnids in my Fauna ~ Invertebrates Album.
888 Ant series.
Check out my 888 Ant's Adventure
sorry..not a good quality but i like it ^_^
will try to get better one next time :p
I spotted these fellows when they were busy bridging leaves. They were doing this so hundreds or thousands of their other fellows could transport from one leave below to another above. how cool is that?!
I really admire their team work. If only all human beings can take them as an example, we could make a better world today than yesterday.
more info about weaver ants and how they build their nests can be found on Wikipedia
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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
The most common tropical tree ant, and a source of food by many people in Indonesia. These two are exchanging liquid. This was in Cape Tribulation, Australia.
The transparent orange/green ants can glow in the sun like little gems. Their complex social behaviour and ability to combine forces (literally) in order to pull large leaves together to weave a nest is awe inspiring.
This major worker usues all its body language to make clear that it will defend what’s behind it by all means. The raised green abdomes, the wide stance, and the fully open jaws leave no room for misunderstanding. Behind it seemed to have been a kind of transfer station where something is passed mouth to mouth to the workers dedicated to a new nest project.
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Formicidae
Genus: Oecophylla
Species: Oecophylla smaragdina
Common names: Green ant, Green tree ant, Weaver ant
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uMthoma Aerial Boardwalk, Western Shores, iSimangaliso Wetland Park, St Lucia, KwaZulu-Natal, SOUTH AFRICA
Inside a weaver ant nest a beetle is being dismantled by worker ants. The nest is a structure fromed by stitching together the edges of leaves. This is done by a row of ants aligning along the edges of a pair of leaves to hold them in place. The "stitching" is then done using the ant larvae, which produce a kind of silk, as needles.
A weaver ant biting me :D...it didn't hurt at all though as the weaver ant's mandibles didn't pierce through to my inner skin.
Not happy with the angles but it's not easy shooting my own left palm/hand.
So who want to be my hand model? i...iiiI'm sure i
More ants: orionmystery.blogspot.com/2012/04/tropical-ants.html
A weaver ant biting me :D...it didn't hurt at all though as the weaver ant's mandibles didn't pierce through to my inner skin.
Not happy with the angles but it's not easy shooting my own left palm/hand.
So who want to be my hand model?
More ants: orionmystery.blogspot.com/2012/04/tropical-ants.html
Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand--Weaver ants sometimes called green ants make their home in the trees and bushes. They bend leaves into tent like structures and glue the seams together with 'silk' that they squeeze from their larva. This ant is extending to grasp another leaf to make another tent.
A lone Green Tree Ant (Oecophylla smaragdina) trying to subdue a much larger stick insect (unknown species) in Tondoon Botanic Gardens, Gladstone, Qld.
Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand--These weaver ants are bending a leaf into a sort of a tent which they will cement together with a silky cement they squeeze from the body of an ant larva. The line and flow of this image kind of reminds me iconic WWII photo of the US Marines raising the American flag after the battle for Iwo Jima.
Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand--These weaver ants are bending a leaf in order to build a nest by glueing leaves together with their siliva.
Giant False Leaf Katydid, Pseudophyllus sp. (titan?) carried away by Red Weaver Ants, Oecophylla smaragdina in Kaeng Krachan national park, Thailand
This photo is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike Licence.
You are free to use this image, as long as it is shared with attribution under the same licence together with the appropriate credits:
By: Tontan Travel
Link: www.tontantravel.com/
These weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) were pretty easy to shoot. They kept walking along in procession on the outside wall of a bungalow at a nice height so I didn't have to lean over or anything. When I stuck my camera close, a couple of them departed from the path and came closer to fight the big evil intruder.
During my walks in the KLCC Park the last couple of days, I've stopped to look at the Hibiscus shrubbery. I've been fascinated by a nest of Weaver Ants there. In fact, the Jumping Spider I photographed a day or so ago on that same bush seemed to be preying on my litte brown friends.
Here's a nest of Weaver Ants - see the white silk used to bind together the Hibiscus foliage. I didn't/don't have the heart to open it up although I'd like to see something of what happens inside. But watching Oecophyllae smaragdinae going about their business is in itself already fascinating. And I 'played' with them a bit by depositing Hibiscus flower parts where they'd surely be found. In the inset, my Ants are happy to pull two Hibiscus stigmas toward the nest opening. Amazing to watch...
Came across this amazing scene with red ants carrying a spider they had just killed. Initially I did not know whether the structure created by the binding of the leaves was the spiders nest which had been invaded by the ants in their attack on the spider, or the ants nest which they had been defending. Have since established with the aid of google that this is an ants nest. These conspicuous insects are weaver ants, creating nests by pulling living tree leaves together and securing them with silk produced by the ants' larvae.
Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand--I don't know what the two horned insects are but I'm clear that those are honeydew secreting bugs (aphids maybe) the ants are feeding on. I did observe that no one was being attached and that all the non ants were behaving as though this was business as usual. If you're an entomologist or just ant savvy please fill me in.
A weaver ant (Oecophylla smaragdina) queen is guarding her eggs and just-hatched larvae. She's founding a new colony. The present brood will grow into workers that will help raise the next brood, and use the larvae from the second brood to stitch together leaves into a nest. The larvae produce silk and are used by the adults like needles to sew leaves together
I spent about 2 hours lying on my belly and crawling around, observing tiny critters and the 2 hours hours were stupendous and fascinating. Amazing events happen in the tiny world, events which clamour for attention, but sadly most do not have the time to stoop down and observe. More than just photographing these critters, it was really exciting to see things unravel in the tiny world; the teamwork displayed by weaver ants in building a colony, the hunt for food, the battles, the courtship and mating, a tiny jumping spider so well camouflaged that its prey never knew that it was being preyed upon and dinner time in the blink of an eye, the rhythmic marching legs of a millipede. Simply fascinating!! Wish I had more time!
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