• Home
  • About Alex Wild
  • Articles
  • Galleries
  • Myrmecology News

Myrmecos Blog

the little things matter

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« Wow. Just, Wow.
Sunday Night Movie: Hitchhiker’s Guide to Murder »

One of these ants is not like the other ones…

March 4, 2010 by myrmecos

Who's that odd ant out?

While in sunny Florida last summer (ah, sunshine! I vaguely remember what that looks like), I spent an hour peering into a nest of little Dorymyrmex elegans. These slender, graceful ants are among Florida’s more charming insects.

Every few minutes, though, the flow of elegant orange insects out of the nest was interrupted by a darker, more robust ant: Dorymyrmex reginicula. Who was this interloper?

Dorymyrmex reginicula is a temporary social parasite. Mature colonies behave pretty much like normal ants. Workers guard the nest, forage for food, and tend the larvae. The queen lays the eggs. Nothing unusual there.

But new colonies are a different matter. Instead of starting with a young mated queen, cloistered in a chamber and patiently rearing a crop of workers on her own, D. reginicula skips those difficult early steps. She invades an existing ant colony. If she’s successful in usurping the position of the resident queen, the colony will slowly metamorphose from the host species to her own, with an intermediate period when older workers of the attacked nest coexist with the newly emerged workers of the parasite.

I’ve normally seen D. reginicula infiltrating nests of the common D. bureni. But this nest was of the rarer D. elegans, and the transition didn’t appear smooth. The host ants were putting up belated resistance, occasionally attacking the D. reginicula workers. It’s a futile fight as their own queen must already have succumbed, but it did provide great drama for a photo shoot.

A tangle at the nest entrance.

Grabbing the problem by the jaws...

...or the legs.

A Dorymyrmex reginicula worker, free of her tormentors.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Ants, Nature, Science | Tagged Ants, Dorymyrmex, formicidae, Insects, Photography, social insects | 12 Comments

12 Responses

  1. on March 4, 2010 at 8:03 am Slamdunk

    Fantastic photos and interesting post.


  2. on March 4, 2010 at 8:43 am Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist

    wow… that’s so interesting.. and i concur with Slamduck, the photos are GREAT.

    I love ant colonies… people need to stop and watch an ant colony just for one hour… there’s so much drama going down!


  3. on March 4, 2010 at 9:29 am Marvin

    Interesting, informative and fantastic photos.


  4. on March 4, 2010 at 12:07 pm TGIQ

    Great story, wonderful pics!


  5. on March 4, 2010 at 4:04 pm James C. Trager

    The first D. reginiculus colonies I found were in a dense population of D. bossutus, and I thought for a while that this species might be their only temporary host. Your fabulous pictures and accompanying text clearly demonstrate otherwise.

    Also notable is that a similar, though less shiny and a bit darker Florida species D. medeis (a.k.a. smithi, but I think erroneously) is parasitic on D. bureni (at least). This one also seems to start out from a queen invading the host nest alone, but then colonies grow and spread into multiple nests by raiding and taking over nearby host colonies.

    Again, really nice images! (And possibly the first of either of these not-so-common species?)


    • on March 8, 2010 at 11:19 am myrmecos

      When I worked at Archbold years ago, I collected D. medeis in association with D. bureni. It was, I think, the first record of that species for the station. I more typically found D. reginiculus with D. bureni as well- but apparently it is more frequently associated with D. bossutus?

      Anyway, thanks for commenting James. It’s always a treat to hear from the guy who described these species.


      • on March 8, 2010 at 4:19 pm James C. Trager

        One more thing, The darker species should correctly be called D. reginicula (meaning — the small-queen dorymyrmex). The specific epithet is a noun in aposition, and thus remains in its original form, no matter what happens to the gender of the genus name.


      • on March 8, 2010 at 4:21 pm myrmecos

        Ah. I like that better anyway. I had been calling it reginicula but deferred to antweb’s spelling for this post. I’ve gone back and changed the spellings.


  6. on March 4, 2010 at 4:28 pm Pete Yeeles

    I know you must tire of this (well.. may not!), but these really are superb photographs. Technically excellent, but that’s not what makes them; I like them because they illustrate a behavior so well. Very nice indeed.


  7. on March 5, 2010 at 4:48 pm robomantis

    With my parasitic formica colony, the host species seem to care for the parasites like babies! They drag them around and carry them. Very odd behavior!


  8. on March 7, 2010 at 9:59 am Ted C. MacRae

    Great photos, as usual, but they are even more enjoyable when accompanied by such fascinating natural history stories.


  9. on March 13, 2010 at 6:07 am hosting

    Ive looked at the end. thank you for this article.



Comments are closed.


  • This blog is an archive; the Myrmecos blog has moved.

    Please update your bookmarks!
  • Alex’s Galleries

    alexanderwild.com

  • Recent Photos

    # SaloméArtificial Street Photography 1Kettering, Ohio, 2022IN WINTER'S GRIPVegetazione metallica.Un regard hypnotisant / A mesmerizing gaze
    More Photos
  • Biology Links

    • Tree of Life
    • Understanding Evolution
  • Blogroll

    • Ainsley Vs Livejournal
    • Ammonite
    • Anna’s Bee World
    • Archetype
    • Arthropoda blog
    • Backyard Arthropod Project
    • Beetles in the Bush
    • biodiversity in focus
    • Bug Dreams
    • Bug Eric
    • Bug Girl’s Blog
    • Burrard-Lucas Photoblog
    • Catalogue of Organisms
    • Creature Cast
    • Dan Heller
    • Debbie's Insect Blog
    • Dechronization
    • Drawing the MotMot
    • Entomoblog
    • Evolving Thoughts
    • Fall to Climb
    • Generant
    • Historias de Hormigas
    • Life on Six Legs
    • Macromite
    • microecos
    • mirmekolozi
    • myrmecoid
    • Myrmician
    • Natural Imagery
    • Nature in the Ozarks
    • NCSU Insect Blog
    • No Cropping Zone
    • omit needless words
    • Photo Synthesis
    • Princess Peppercloud
    • Science Blogs
    • Snail’s Tales
    • Stu Jenks
    • The Ant Hunter
    • The Ant Room
    • The Bug Whisperer
    • The Loom
    • This Week in Evolution
    • What's Bugging You?
    • Wild about Ants
    • Xenogere
  • Insect Links

    • Ant Farm Forum
    • Ant Insights
    • Antweb
    • Bug Squad
    • bugguide.net
    • Xerces Society
  • Photography Links

    • Canon Photography Forums
    • Digital Photography Review
    • DIY Photography
    • Igor Siwanowicz
    • Mark Plonsky
    • photo.net
    • Piotr Naskrecki
    • The Strobist
  • Popular Posts

    • Rover Ants (Brachymyrmex patagonicus), an emerging pest species
    • The eggs that weren't
    • About Alex Wild
    • Articles
    • How to Identify the Argentine Ant, Linepithema humile
    • My, what big eyes you have...
    • Army Ants of the North
    • Reader question: who discovered the sex of ant workers?
    • Ants of the Paraná, then and now
    • Are ants left-handed?
  • Recent Posts

    • This blog has moved.
    • Friday Beetle Blogging: The Hollyhock Weevil
    • The Friday Beetle will be late…
    • Bed bugs reach an all-time high
    • Answer to the Monday Night Mystery
  • Recent Comments

    • Donald Byron Johnson on Reader question: who discovered the sex of ant workers?
    • Anonymous on Update on the Rogue Taxonomist
    • Ant on Arizona Daily Star covers “Planet of the Ants”
    • Ga. Girl on Beware the Cow-Killer
    • Anonymous on Beware the Cow-Killer
  • Categories

  • Archives

  • animation Ants aphids arachnids Argentina arizona army ants art Bees beetles behavior biodiversity biology Biology Links bugs Canon carabidae coleoptera copyright Darwin desert diptera E. O. Wilson ecology entomology Evolution fail fire ants Flies formicidae genetics google haiku Harpegnathos imaging Insect Links Insects invasive species lighting Linepithema macro macrophotography macro photography Martialis media miniscule muppets music myrmecology mystery natural history Nature new species odontomachus Parasites Paratrechina pests pheidole Photography Photography business photoshop phylogenetics phylogeny Pogonomyrmex politics predation Scarabaeidae Science SEM social insects spiders Taxonomy termites travel wasps
  • Nature Blog Network
    Add to Technorati Favorites

    Follow this blog

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


  • Follow Following
    • Myrmecos Blog
    • Join 91 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Myrmecos Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: