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Weaver ants carrying the berries uphill on a tree trunk - to read details of how they do this - do visit my blog "Lilliputian World in my Backyard" at www.cheernature.com/2014/07/lilliputian-world-in-my-backy...
Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand--I don't know what's going on here: attitude ajustment, chicropractic adjustment... what? After a few minutes the 'victim' went back about his business. Anyone know? One Flickr member suggested that the ant being singled out might be from another colony and was being inducted into the new family.
Weaver ants are reddish ants that live in the tropical forests of Africa and India. They are also found in Australia and the Solomon Islands. They are famous for the elaborate treetop nests they build. Weaver ants are champions of cooperation when it comes to building a nest. Even the recently hatched larvae pitch in! They provide the thread that stitches the nest together.
The nest starts very simply. A group of worker ants finds a leaf that is soft and easy to bend. Several ants line up. Each holds an edge of a leaf in its mandibles and feet. Slowly, the ants pull the two leaf edges together. More and more workers join in. They link their feet and pull until the two leaf edges are nearly touching.
Next, other worker ants carry larvae from the old nest and gently squeeze them between their mandibles. This causes the larvae to ooze a thin thread of silk. Then the workers get busy. Just like tiny tailors, they stitch the leaves together. In fact, another name for weaver ants is “tailor ants.” Treetop nests can become extremely large. Sometimes they even connect branches from two nearby trees.
A giant weaver ant nest may look like it is damaging the leaves and branches of a tree. But weaver ants actually protect the tree they are living in. The ants act like miniature bodyguards for the tree. They keep other animals like birds, reptiles, and other insects from living in the tree or eating it. Sharing the same resource or living space is called symbiosis.
A Sweet Deal:
Weaver ants have a “sweet tooth” that some creatures use to their advantage. Certain butterfly caterpillars produce drops of a sweet liquid called honeydew. The honeydew attracts weaver ants to the caterpillars. The ants then protect the caterpillars.
Some caterpillars have a clever plot though. By luring the ants with their sweet honeydew, they are able to enter the ants’ treetop nest and gobble up their larvae! Another arthropod also tricks the weaver ants. Certain species of jumping spiders look and smell like weaver ants. This allows them to enter the weaver ants’ nest without being noticed. Once inside, the jumping spiders eat the ants as well as their eggs and larvae.
Info. Courtesy: www.globio.org/glossopedia/article.aspx?art_id=11&art...
More Cambodian country food, or Genocide Cuisine. My guesses, clockwise from top-left: waterbug-style roaches, maeng-da -- the giant Thai rice field waterbugs, eggs from I don't know what, crickets?, BBQ whole birds, BBQ snakes, weaver ant eggs?, nom mai -- wood worms, large grasshoppers, and in the middle from left to right are jing leed (smaller crickets) and more waterbug-style roaches.
Cosmophasis bitaeniata - the Green Tree Ant jumping spider - at Tondoon Botanic Gardens, Gladstone. It is thought that this jumping spider is a chemical mimic of the Green Tree Ant (or 'Weaver Ant')
Prey on small insects which smaller such as Hemiptera a.k.a True Bugs, and are known for their unique nest building behaviour where workers construct nests by weaving together leaves using larval silk, this is Weaver ants or Green ants (genus Oecophylla). They are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae (order Hymenoptera).
Oecophylla smaragdina queen ant (weaver ant, green ant, green tree ant, ass bumper ant, orange gaster), Thailand
Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand--These weaver ants (also called tent ants and green ants) are taking this legless lizard up the tree trunk to their nest which is made from tree leaves.
The Weaver Ants are very aggressive and have very painful bite. Just look at this little fellow trying to threaten me with its menacing pincers! Pic taken Simei.
*Note: More pics of Insects and Arachnids in my Fauna ~ Invertebrates Album.
Chatuchak Park / Bangkok / Thailand
This photo is published under Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike Licence, means you are free to use this photo with attribution under same licence. When giving attribution, please use following;
Owner: Thai National Parks
A queen weaver ant threatening to bite me while I photographer her and her new colony. You will see pupae of different stages of development in this set. More tropical ants: orionmystery.blogspot.com/2012/04/tropical-ants.html
The weaver ants are another notable aspect of the forest. They were initially observed crawling all over the ekki tree in the heart of the forest. They discouraged tree hugging or climbing.
Seeing the hard, collaborative work they were up to on a plant along the forest path, I was obliged to let them have some recognition.
Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand--How is it that these tiny creatures with such tiny brains know to remove the bee's wings first.
Ants observed on this plant seemed to be obtaining either raw material (sap) to act as glue in their building project, or a food source.
cropped Oecophylla smaragdina
Oh boy, is'nt he look furious?
p/s: now i know that people call it Weaver ants in English, in Malay we called it 'Kerengga' (pronounced as Key-Rang-Ga)
Weaver Ant (Oecophylla smaragdina) with Stingless Bee ( Tetrigona apicalis - ID credit: Zestin Soh) carcass. Selangor, Malaysia.
A male ant-mimic crab spider with prey - a weaver ant. It's clear that the mimicry is for predation. The weaver ants must be quite silly though to fall for a mimicry like that.
I mean, look at the spider's big head and forehead - it's too big and too cute to pass as a weaver ant! Did I mention the spider has a big butt too? :D
Amyciaea lineatipes
G7
The worker ants form a chain along the edge of the leaf and pull the edges together by shortening the chain by one ant at a time. Once the leaf edges are in place, each ant holds one larva in its mandibles and gently squeezes the larva to produce silk. The silk is used to glue the leaf edges together.
Adult weaver ants are reddish to brown in color and have 10-segmented antennae with 2-segmented clubs. Their eyes are relatively larger than those of other species of ants. They do not have stingers, but can give painful bites caused by the chemicals secreted from their abdomen. They make nests in trees or on leaves of legumes, or in bunds or levees of the fields. They have the most complex nests among ants' nests. They use fresh leaves to build nests.
Weaver ants get their name from their habit of binding fresh leaves with silk to form their nests. Their lifecycle spans a period of 8 to 10 weeks.
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"Weaver ants or green ants (genus Oecophylla) are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae (order Hymenoptera). Weaver ants are obligately arboreal and are known for their unique nest building behaviour where workers construct nests by weaving together leaves using larval silk. Colonies can be extremely large consisting of more than a hundred nests spanning numerous trees and contain more than half a million workers."
"Weaver ants are one of the most valued types of insects eaten by humans (entomophagy). In addition to being used as a biological control agent to increase plant production, weaver ants can be utilized directly as a protein and food source since the ants (especially the ant larvae) are edible for humans and high in protein and fatty acids."
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaver_ant
It is said workers ants are used in traditional medicine in India.