#Polyergus

[apsciencebydan]

BUCKET LIST ANTS!

I found a species of Amazon ant (Polyergus longicornis) in 2022, including that fantastic gynandromorph, and that nest is still there and I check on it regularly. But there's another more rarely seen species to be found here. Polyergus oligergus raids Formica archboldi (the skull collecting ants, so called because they pile up trapjaw ant heads outside their nests. I'm not making this up) nests and carries back larvae; and yesterday evening, I witnessed a raid and found the nest! 😍

I kinda lost my mind at the sight of the competing swarms of ants so I didn't get any good pictures of the raid, and the raiders trekked 90 feet through thick brush back to their nest, which also made shooting difficult. But damn, this made my day!

Polyergus oligergus is red, Formica archboldi is black

The Formica nest is under the oak tree, and I'm standing by the Polyergus nest. Quite a long ways! I paced it as just over 90 feet. The Polyergus nest itself was in the middle of a clump of grass, an inch or two above the ground. Never would have found it myself.

Pile of trap-jaw heads around a Formica archboldi nest, from a few years ago:

Anyway, spend enough time wandering in well-preserved places and you'll see wild things. ❤️

[futurebird]

Polyergus the evil stepmom ant

This ant is a cradle robber and a homewrecker. She'll steal your sister. She'll kill your mama. All her daughters are just as mean. It's like Cinderella. Evil step sisters move in, poor Formica ants do all the work. But instead of going to the ball, these girls steal babies.

[uwgaigvbmsn]

Inked babe riding midgets hard cock Hot blonde camwhore with amazing body Brown boobs Big o booty Girlsrimming Family Rimjob Darcia Lee Lanie Morgan is a hot brunette with a great body who is ready to fuck her porn agent i Ride the dildo like a maniac on FindChatSex Vietnam show cam Philly freaky shit Hijab Abaya Candid

[tenth-sentence]

Hence he considers them as strictly household slaves.

"On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" - Charles Darwin

[vintagewildlife]

Polyergus breviceps worker kidnapping a pupa from another colony By: Howard Topoff From: Natural History Magazine 1984

[sybaritick]

thoughts after doing my updated pinned post: while I would like to get out of my comfort zone a bit more w my fanfic/smut this year (it's fun and builds writing skill!), it also doesn't really bother me to be, for the most part, The Guy Who Writes Power Imbalance/Manipulation/Sex That's About Conquest, in the sense that a thriving ecosystem of excellent fanficcers can contain all sorts of creatures suited to very particular niches in addition to its generalists.

if you are the sort to binge watch a playlist of "predatory flatworm hunts and eats [other invertebrate]" YouTube videos you will enjoy seeing some pretty boy or naïve activist taken apart in a dozen different ways in a dozen different places in my little oneshots; how fascinating that it's such an incredibly simple animal compared to most predators, but the way it injects digestive enzymes into its prey and eats them half-dissolved...! for some, pondering it once is enough; for others they will develop a fascination with these other tiny invertebrate monsters, the slave-making ants, the parasitoid wasps too, quoting Darwin's "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars..."

and yet this is such a tiny fraction of the incredible richness of the biological world; there are uncountable species and behaviors and relationships people might find interesting. I am just one writer, or just Megarhyssa atrata drilling for the larvae of the wood wasp, or the deceitful Polyergus lucidus queen; may you witness and enjoy my ambitious American appetites as another tiny piece of the great and terrible tapestry of human sexuality, whether or not my works are the sort you care to linger on.

[saltycharacters]

Do you have any insect headcanons for the other Mob Psycho 100 characters? (For example, Tsubomi, Shou, the body improvement club, etc). I love your insect AU, I keep looking at it and smiling. It's the best thing since sliced bread

AAAAH TY TY TY I'm so glad people enjoy my mp100 bug au it makes me so happy :] I can totally list off some more headcanons, here's what I'm thinking:

Sho and his dad would probably be a species of fire ants, with Tochiro being an ant colony monarch who invades and destroys other ant colonies, as ants tend to do irl. I was originally thinking the "Polyergus lucidus" (no common name) ant species for the Claw leader, as they're an obligate social parasite that assimilates other colonies and forces the pre-existing ants to do their bidding, but then I realized I'd have to apply that assignment to Sho as well and it didn't feel quite right. I was also considering bullet ants for their notoriously painful sting, but I also base my headcanons off of hair color so the red/orange fire ant species seemed like the best fit.

For Tsubomi, I'm still deciding between another black carpenter ant like Mob and Ritsu, or the more likely choice of the starry sky longhorned beetle (becuse of her long black hair). See, I'm split on whether I only want psychics to be ants, or whether the AU has some non-esper ants as well- it all depends on how I'm translating the psychic powers in the bug world, whether I want to go the more realistic route and replace it or give myself the leeway of letting em retain their canon abilities. I'm leaning towards a proficiency in chemical communication, as ants IRL largely base their interactions and movements on the chemicals other ants produce. So an ant like Mob would just be particularly skilled at instructing and sending other ants in his colony at parasatoids (the equivalent of ghosts in this AU), and that would mean the entire colony is an extension of his powers. Reigen's situation would then especially make sense, as he's pretending to be an ant but can't produce the necessary chemicals to interact with/command other ants in the way Mob or other espers can. The other bugs would just live among the colony and represent ordinary people, such as Tome being a weevil, or Tsubomi being a longhorn beetle.

The body improvement club would totally be full of stag and rhino beetles. Mushashi Goda would be a giant stag beetle, Hideki Yamamura an ox beetle, Hiroshi Kumagawa an eastern hercules beetle, Jun Sagawa a western hercules beetle, Ryohei Shimura a hercules beetle (not western or eastern), and Tenga Onigawara a coconut palm beetle. All based on their hair color/style :]

As a bonus, I'll also include the rest of the telepathy club: Haruto Kijabayashi is a green soldier/stink bug or green tiger beetle, Mameta Inukawa is a cream-spot ladybird or maybe a blonde ducky isopod or even a golden tortoise beetle, Momozo Takenaka would be a pavement ant or a spider ant (Leptomyrmex), and Shirihiko Saruta would be a horned passalus beetle.

Double bonus, Ichi Mezato would be a glasswing butterfly and Dozen Roshuto would be another ant mimic like reigen, although I want to make him something other than a spider like the "Dulichius inflatus" species of beetle or maybe the "Euderces picipes or even "Myrmecoris gracilis" species of bugs (none have common names).

[onejamtart]

The Most Brutal Ant: The Slaver Ant Polyergus | By Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell 

Peace, JW

[cartipdf]

Les aventures d'une fourmi rouge (The adventures of a red ant)

Les aventures d’une fourmi rouge (The adventures of a red ant)

Livre bilingue anglais/français (Bilingual English/French Book), par (by) Henri de la Blanchère, traduit par (translated by) Nicolae Sfetcu Les Polyergues roussâtres, les plus puissantes des fourmis de la France par leur courage dans les combats, forment un peuple composé de quatre ordres de citoyens: les mâles, les femelles, les neutres ou guerriers… et les esclaves, ouvriers conquis sur des…

[senadimell]

I'm working on some fanart for the awesome story Polyergus by RockyMountainRattlesnake on ao3. Here's a preliminary sketch for something I'll either ink or watercolor--anything stand out or look a little off? (I haven't completely done the wrinkles on the sleeves or the details on the console yet because they're a little finicky, and the coat will be darker).

[apsciencebydan]

The Amazon Ant nest which provided me with the coolest single creature I may ever find nearly 2 years ago is still there and active! I wondered if it would survive this past winter and a burn, and was glad to see both species out and about yesterday. Polyergus longicornis can no longer feed themselves, so they raid the nests of Formica dolosa ants and carry back "slave" workers to care for them. So if you find a nest, there will be two ant species in the same burrow. Usually you will just see the Formica out and about doing maintenence on the nest, but if disturbed the Polyergus and their large mandibles will come out ready to fight. Or if you're really lucky you'll catch them on a raid, which is quite a sight.

OR, if you're prepared to use your entire allowance of luck for your life, you'll catch a gynandromorph male/worker just emerged. 👀

[futurebird]

Fairy Tales (but it’s ants)

Cinderella A Formica alate has a polyergus wicked stepmother, and evil polyergus alate step-sisters. The prince is searching for a bride and holds a great nuptial ball. Everyone at the ball is polyergus … except for the prince who was born from an unfertilized egg before his step mom killed his mother. He searches for the one with the “dainty mandibles” (all the polyergus have gaping mandibles)

Snow White and the Seven Rove Beetles Snow White is a bull ant (Myrmecia) her mother the queen can no longer lay fertilized eggs and is hiding it from the colony.  The queen commands a woodlouse to take Snow White into the woods and kill her because of a prophecy that a younger ant will take her throne. The woodlouse can’t bear to murder her and leaves her to be found by seven rove beetles who raise her in a little nest deep in the forest. The queen finds out she’s still alive and tries to poison her with Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a fungus that will drive an ant mad and make her climb to the highest branch and die there. This backfires and the queen poisons herself, Snow White becomes a gamergate and queen of the kingdom.

Little Red Riding Hood A young worker ant (wood ant) is sent to help out at one of the other nests of her polydomus colony. When she gets to the satellite nest, which is supposed to have a queen in need of assistance with too many brood… there is a spider mimic pretending to be her aunt! Her older sister a brave major kills the spider and they take the orphaned brood back to the main nest.

Hanna and Gretel Two worker ants are foraging far from the nest for the first time when they encounter the mysterious house of a phorid fly. The fly tempts them with honeydew and candy, all along planning on laying eggs in their heads. But the workers are so exhausted she decides to fatten them up first.

[dougdimmadodo]

Skull-Collecting Ant (Formica archboldi)

Family: Formicidae (Ant Family)

IUCN Conservation Status: Unassessed

Found mainly in dry forest habitats in the south-eastern USA, the Skull-Collecting Ant is anatomically very similar to the other roughly 290 species in the genus Formica, but stands out among them due to a particularly strange and gruesome behavioural trait - it decorates its colony with the disembodied heads of trapjaw ants (a group of ants in the genus Odontomachus known for their extremely powerful mandibles that slam shut at immense speed in a manner reminiscent of a beartrap.) Exactly why they do this is unclear - they possess the ability to secrete pheromones similar to those that trapjaw ants use to communicate, and as ants rely largely on chemical signals to identify one another this allows them to infiltrate trapjaw ant colonies and subdue the colony’s workers by spraying them with formic acid (a powerful natural acid primarily produced by ants) before dragging them back to their own nest and dismembering them. Although they do harvest the meat of trapjaw ants as food, they go to great lengths to leave the head capsules (the sections of an insect’s exoskeleton that covers its head) intact and scatter them around their nest in a seemingly deliberate manner. In 2018, it was proposed that these eerie decorations may actually be a way of effectively “chemically camouflaging” colonies from Polyergus oligergus,  yet another species of ant known to parasitize the Skull-Collecting Ant by moving into its colonies, stealing its food and chemically manipulating its workers into raising their young (the exoskeleton of every insect species is lined with a waxy substance known as cuticular hydrocarbon and the chemical composition of every species is slightly different - Polyergus oligergus identifies its hosts based on the chemicals in their cuticular hydrocarbon, so by filling their colonies with parts of the exoskeletons of trapjaw ants, which Polyergus oligergus cannot parasitize, Skull-Collecting Ants may be tricking parasites into thinking they are trapjaw ants), although further research into whether colonies of Skull-Collecting Ants that fail to collect enough skulls are more likely to be parasitized need to be conducted before this can be confirmed. Besides trapdoor ants, Skull-Collecting Ant workers have been known to gather small insects, fruit, sap and the sugar-rich secretions of aphids as food for their colony.

Image source: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/220167-Formica-archboldi

[tenth-sentence]

Huber then introduced a single slave (F. fusca), and she instantly set to work, fed and saved the survivors; made some cells and tended the larvae, and put all to rights.

"On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" - Charles Darwin

[vintagewildlife]

Polyergus breviceps ants By: Raymond A. Mendez From: Natural History Magazine 1984