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Found a nest of one of my favorites! A true oddball. Leptomyrmex erythrocephalus, the red-headed spider ant.
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Items tagged with: ants
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A Texas leafcutter ant, Atta texana, hauls spring Prunus buds along a tree branch on her way back to the nest.
#Ants #Insects #Atta #nature #leafcutterants
This finding that some ant queens can lay eggs of another species is astonishing. Biology is far stranger than we can possibly imagine.
nature.com/articles/d41586-025…
‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother
Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.Kozlov, Max
This oughta really wind up the wingnuts.
"Living organisms are assumed to produce same-species offspring1,2. Here, we report a shift from this norm in Messor ibericus, an ant that lays individuals from two distinct species. In this life cycle, females must clone males of another species because they require their sperm to produce the worker caste. As a result, males from the same mother exhibit distinct genomes and morphologies, as they belong to species that diverged over 5 million years ago. The evolutionary history of this system appears as sexual parasitism3 that evolved into a natural case of cross-species cloning4,5, resulting in the maintenance of a male-only lineage cloned through distinct species’ ova. We term females exhibiting this reproductive mode as xenoparous, meaning they give birth to other species as part of their life cycle."
nature.com/articles/s41586-025…
One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature
In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same mother having distinct genomes and morphologies.Nature
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An Oecophylla smaragdina weaver ant hangs from the bottom of her nest, alert to any photographers that might try anything brash.
Cape Tribulation, Queensland, Australia.
Smugglers busted trying to take thousands of queen ants out of Kenya, destined for the exotic pet trade. #ants #WildlifeTrafficking edition.cnn.com/2025/04/16/afr…
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Yes! Incredible!!
Here's a video from the paper.. Ants rock!
#ProblemSolving #Ants
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Small fungus-farming ants, Mycetosoritis hartmanni, in their subterranean garden. The fungus- a white stringy material- grows between the bits of debris fed to it by the ants. The ants then feed from the fungus- a true agricultural system. Texas. #ants #insects
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Eucharitid wasps are specialized parasites of ants. Here's one in a nest of Pheidole bicarinata. Arizona, USA. #orasema #Eucharitidae #Wasps #Ants #Insects
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An Acromyrmex octospinosus leafcutter ant, photographed at the famous La Selva biological station in the lowland rainforests of Costa Rica.
#Ants #Acromyrmex #Insects #Spines
Job! An endowed professorship at Arizona State University in the systematics and taxonomy of ants. A rare opportunity for the right sort of ant nerd/desert rat.
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The enigmatic Acanthoponera minor, an ant that is occasionally seen patrolling the low vegatation of wet neotropical forests, about which little is known. I photographed this one in Ecuador.
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The life cycle of an ant (Camponotus festinatus) laid out in a single photograph: eggs, larvae of various ages, a silk-covered pupa, and an adult worker. At #UTAustin's Brackenridge Field Laboratory, in Texas.
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A map of global ant diversity.
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A queen Texas leafcutter ant in the fungus garden.
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Quite specific, but a very interesting article about #ants and their early evolution. The authors propose a 3 step scenario based on fossils and their interpretation. Really fascinating !
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/20…
#insects #nature #ecology #fossil #paleontology #entomology
Evolution and systematics of the Aculeata and kin (Hymenoptera), with emphasis on the ants (Formicoidea: †@@@idae fam. nov., Formicidae)
Fossils provide unique opportunity to understand the tempo and mode of evolution and are essential for modeling the history of lineage diversification.bioRxiv