Crematogaster
awild | May 19, 2009I took my shiny new Canon 50D out for a spin this weekend, and along the railroad tracks I found a worthy myrmecological subject: Crematogaster feeding at the swollen nectaries of an Ailanthus Tree of Heaven. Ailanthus is an introduced Asian tree that's gone weedy across much of North America. Our local ants don't seem to mind, though, it's extra snack food for them.
sb admin | May 4, 2009
A Crematogaster ant is held up by a kleptoparasitic Milichia patrizii ant-mugging fly.
Last July, while wandering about the coastal forests of St. Lucia in eastern South Africa, I happened across an intriguing scene half-way up a spiny Acacia trunk. Some diminutive gray flies were pestering a trail of ants as they walked along the tree.
The flies' exact activities were hard to observe with the naked eye, but it looked like nothing I'd ever seen. They seemed to be grabbing ants, pinning them to the trunk, and after a few seconds letting them go again.
The macro lens on my camera serves as…
awild | August 21, 2008
On my recent visit to the coastal forests of Kwazulu-Natal I noticed basketball-like growths on many of the Acacia trees. In North America, any large gray ball you see hanging off a tree branch is liable to be a hornet's nest. In South America, it's probably a carton nest of fierce little Azteca ants. The equivalent in South Africa? I didn't know.
A little bit of poking around in the acacias revealed the culprit. It was Crematogaster tricolor, an orange ant about half a centimeter long:
They didn't appreciate the disturbance, apparently, because they came after me without…