Martineziana dutertrei Fire Ant Beetle
Texas
Any insect that can fool an ant nest’s security system gains access to rich stores of food. Martineziana scarab beetles are found only in colonies of Solenopsis fire ants where they feed on the ants and their brood. This beetle was collected from a red imported fire ant mound at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory in Austin, Texas.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
Myrmecos Blog 
Hi Alex, May I use one of your ant photos to do a drawing from? I take a drawing class at the local community college and next week we are working on cross-contour drawings and I thought it would be fun to use an ant as the subject. All of your photographs have great lighting and interesting perspectives, so one of them might lend itself well to the project. No guarantees that I will do it any justice.
PPC
Hello PPC! I’d be honored if you used my photo for your drawing. Let us know how it comes out!
Alex
Hi there, could I please use this picture in a slide show for kids to prepare them for hiking so they would know to avoid fire ants. Thanks 🙂
Jade- Please do!