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Sometimes their partiality for pudgy little insects lands field ants in unusual situations. Many baby beetles (often called grubs) fit the mold for a perfect field ant meal. Slow, soft, and chubby, beetle grubs don’t stand a chance when hungry field ants stumble across them while foraging. To ward off potential beetle slayers, many beetle species, like tortoise beetles, found an inventive solution: poop shields. Here’s how it works: Some plants in our forests and across our cities have certain “stop eating me!” chemicals in their leaves, called deterrents. When most insects bite into a leaf and smell the deterrents, they get as far away as possible. Not our resourceful beetle grubs. They eat as much of these stinky leaves as they can, pooping stinky leaf poop all over the place. Then they gather up the poop and stick it on their bodies, making a force field of stink that follows them wherever they go. Field ants catching a whiff of these otherwise tasty tidbits run in the opposite direction of our little Pigpens. If you feed these baby beetles non-stinky plants, they still make a poop force field, but because they have no deterrents to protect them, field ants will ignore the BM blanket and eat them right on up. Photo Gallery - What to eat in the city? A Formica pallidefulva forages for nectar on a dandelion in the park. - © Alex Wild Slaving Away It may seem like all fun and games for field ants, frolicking across our forests, lawns, and traffic medians, grocery shopping and building their houses. But field ants have a wicked foe prowling those same forests, lawns and traffic medians, combing the grass for field ant nests: Amazon ants. Amazon ants look a lot like field 55
ants. Same size, similar color, same big eyes, similar camel humpy back. Amazon ants and field ants look so similar they could sometimes almost pass as the same species, except one major exception: Amazon ants have dagger-sharp, sickle-shaped jaws. Their jaws are so pointy they can’t take care of their tender babies—any attempt at carrying or feeding could result in a fatal stab wound to their young. So Amazon ants came up with a solution: They raid field ant nests, slashing and smashing adults as they go, snatch up hearty pupae in those jaws, and scurry back to their nests. Now, we remember from the ant’s life cycle that baby ants take a lot of food, but once those ants pupate, they don’t eat at all. They just sit there helpless in their nests and wait to turn into adults. By stealing pupae, Amazon ants basically snatch up adult workers that require no maintenance from the Amazon ants. Once in the slave-raiders’ nest, field ant pupae’s bodies start to pick up the smells in the nest. Ants tell one another apart by smell. If a field ant starts to smell like an Amazon ant, she’ll start to think of herself as an Amazon ant. When she emerges as an adult, she does the tasks to help the colony that she would do in her real mother’s nest: gathering food, building the nest, raising babies, taking care of the queen. She usually has no idea that she’s a slave, helping her enemies to grow so they can raid more field ant nests. Photo Gallery - Enslaving our fields ants Slave-making ants (Polyergus mexicanus) have just raided a Formica subsericea nest and made off with field ant pupae. - © Alex Wild During our summer, poor field ants are enslaved up and down the United States, from the forest near my North Carolina house to the parks of busy Long Island, New York. But you and I can still spot those lucky enough to escape the dagger jaws of the Amazon ants. They run along our tree trunks and across our sidewalks, planting seeds, snagging bugs, turning soil. We can look for their double humps and drop them a snack, like a piece 56
- Page 6 and 7: up what scurried away. Sure enough,
- Page 8 and 9: students had found. As James stared
- Page 10 and 11: many individuals of Nylanderia flav
- Page 12 and 13: A word cloud of ant species collect
- Page 14 and 15: Credits About This Interactive Book
- Page 16 and 17: 1 Ants What’s the big deal about
- Page 18 and 19: and males have wings, those wings s
- Page 20 and 21: Shorn larvae fall over like little
- Page 22 and 23: While ant nests differ greatly, whe
- Page 24 and 25: Meet the Black Carpenter Ant The bl
- Page 26 and 27: Movie - Black Carpenter Ants I used
- Page 28 and 29: 3 Lasius Ant Lasius Lasius ants are
- Page 30 and 31: space. Many more types of engineers
- Page 32 and 33: School of Ants Map - Lasius Ant hea
- Page 34 and 35: Meet the Pavement Ant Wars happen i
- Page 36 and 37: Pavement ants are not native to New
- Page 38 and 39: Meet the Odorous House Ant People a
- Page 40 and 41: These creatures depend on odorous h
- Page 42 and 43: We know they love to nest in mulch.
- Page 44 and 45: Meet the Crazy Ant Crazy relatives.
- Page 46 and 47: Once they move in, they gobble up a
- Page 48 and 49: 7 Winter Ant Prenolepis imparis Win
- Page 50 and 51: All that depth serves a purpose. Wh
- Page 52 and 53: the pinhole of light shining throug
- Page 54 and 55: Meet the Field Ant Formica ants, us
- Page 58 and 59: School of Ants Map - Field Ant Nort
- Page 60 and 61: Meet the Asian Needle Ant The Asian
- Page 62 and 63: the area around the sting. For thos
- Page 64 and 65: Our forest is a lot like the car fa
- Page 66 and 67: Meet the Winnow Ant Aphaenogaster r
- Page 68 and 69: Seed planting is a successful busin
- Page 70 and 71: Meet the Big Headed Ant The first t
- Page 72 and 73: Photo Gallery - Big heads, little h
- Page 74 and 75: 12 Little Black Ant Monomorium mini
- Page 76 and 77: In our ant stalkings, Will and I qu
- Page 78 and 79: 13 Thief Ant Solenopsis molesta Nev
- Page 80 and 81: they feel their way to and from foo
- Page 82 and 83: Argentine ants and yellow crazy ant
- Page 84 and 85: Meet the Acrobat Ant One summer, I
- Page 86 and 87: Photo Gallery - Acrobat reproductiv
- Page 88 and 89: 15 Honeyrump Ant Brachymyrmex depil
- Page 90 and 91: School of Ants Map - Brachymymex An
- Page 92 and 93: Agricultural and Forest Entomology,
- Page 94 and 95: eetle (Coleoptera : Scarabaeidae) i
- Page 96 and 97: (Hymenoptera : Formicidae) and Lasi
- Page 98 and 99: Milford, E. 1999. Ant communities i
- Page 100 and 101: Nygard, J. P., Sanders, N. J. & Con
- Page 102 and 103: Naturwissenschaften, 98, 651-659. d
- Page 104 and 105: Muscedere, M. L., Traniello, J. F.
ants. Same size, similar color, same big eyes, similar camel<br />
humpy back. Amazon ants and field ants look so similar they<br />
could sometimes almost pass as the same species, except one<br />
major exception: Amazon ants have dagger-sharp, sickle-shaped<br />
jaws. Their jaws are so pointy they can’t take care of their tender<br />
babies—any attempt at carrying or feeding could result in a fatal<br />
stab wound to their young.<br />
So Amazon ants came up with a solution: They raid field ant<br />
nests, slashing and smashing adults as they go, snatch up hearty<br />
pupae in those jaws, and scurry back to their nests. Now, we<br />
remember from the ant’s life cycle that baby ants take a lot of<br />
food, but once those ants pupate, they don’t eat at all. They just<br />
sit there helpless in their nests and wait to turn into adults. By<br />
stealing pupae, Amazon ants basically snatch up adult workers<br />
that require no maintenance from the Amazon ants.<br />
Once in the slave-raiders’ nest, field ant pupae’s bodies start to<br />
pick up the smells in the nest. Ants tell one another apart by<br />
smell. If a field ant starts to smell like an Amazon ant, she’ll start<br />
to think of herself as an Amazon ant. When she emerges as an<br />
adult, she does the tasks to help the colony that she would do in<br />
her real mother’s nest: gathering food, building the nest, raising<br />
babies, taking care of the queen. She usually has no idea that<br />
she’s a slave, helping her enemies to grow so they can raid more<br />
field ant nests.<br />
Photo Gallery - Enslaving our fields ants<br />
Slave-making ants (Polyergus mexicanus) have just raided a Formica<br />
subsericea nest and made off with field ant pupae. - © Alex Wild<br />
During our summer, poor field ants are enslaved up and down the<br />
United States, from the forest near my North Carolina house to<br />
the parks of busy Long Island, New York. But you and I can still<br />
spot those lucky enough to escape the dagger jaws of the<br />
Amazon ants. They run along our tree trunks and across our<br />
sidewalks, planting seeds, snagging bugs, turning soil. We can<br />
look for their double humps and drop them a snack, like a piece<br />
56
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