#australian ant

[drhoz]

2093 - Camponotus consobrinus - Banded Sugar Ant

I saw quite a few ant species on te Australian leg of my holiday, and this species, common enough to be a household pest in parts of the Eastern states, was the most common.

Originally described as Formica consobrinus in 1842. 'consobrinus' means cousin, referring to the resemblance the species has to C. herculeanus, although that species in from northern Eurasia and North America. Its actual relatives are in the nigriceps species group, which also includes C. clarior, C. dryandrae, C. eastwoodi, C. loweryi, C. longideclivis, C. pallidiceps and C. prostans and of course nigriceps itself, which replaces consobrinus as you move west into drier areas.

This species dominates the nocturnal ant community, and has a constant war going with the mostly diurnal meat ants (Iridomyrmex). Both species will block up the nest entrances of the other, and when daily rounds of sabotage aren't enough may invade the other nest and attempt to exterminate their rivals.

Sugar is a major part of their diet, and to bring other workers to a new food source they often run in tandem, physically carry one of their sisters, or leave a pheremone trail.

Nests may be found in holes in wood, among the roots of plants, insides the twigs of trees and shrubs, between rocks or in the soil, and under paving stones.

Mt. Ainsley, ACT

[makesteddiecanon]

Heartbreak High as things i found on my phone

Bonus:

[carionto]

How to beat Deathworlders

I don't know what I want to write and it's a little frustrating. So, to fix that, I'm just gonna throw this at me - Giant Ant Planet

The first call to arms Humanity has declared. They mobilize with unseen speed and precision seven of their mightiest Dreadnoughts, hundreds of transports, and amass fifty thousand soldiers, fully armed and trained on the target.

They are headed to a world Humans scouted as having great potential for life to flourish. How correct they were.

In orbit above the planet Chromathium-2-4, the station Truncated Crescent Ellipses was tasked with conducting experiments to test the viability of Human-digestible flora and fauna living on Chromatoff (as the scientists began to call it for short).

When the fleet arrived, the final message from the station turned out to be true - it had crash landed on the surface. From the chaos of the recordings they received, there was a containment breach and the systems were under attack by some unknown electronic waves and incomprehensible code. A hostile act, but by who?

This was two weeks ago. Whoever it was, they would know the wrath of Humanity. Once we find your traces, there will be no hiding for long.

Preliminary scans show the station was dead and only local creatures and plants appeared, in greater density than elsewhere, but no matter. Just some animals.

The first unmanned craft landed and began exploring the wreckage. All of the digital systems were fried, not a hint of power remained anywhere. Attempts to manually power anything up proved fruitless - the data had been replaced with pure garbage code. Then, the drone vanished underground and went silent. Connection failure.

Orbital sights showed nothing, all frequencies were monitored and were free of unaccounted signals. The next group of drones descended and shortly after touchdown they too were seemingly devoured by the ground, all power and electronic signals cut.

A deep scan showed the same dense biological activity, but looking closer at the data it was like a carpet just below the actual surface layer. And for whatever reason the pulse couldn't penetrate below a few meters. Scanning areas further from the crash revealed a much more detailed and sparsely populated map going down the expected three kilometers.

For the third attempt they kept several drones above the landed ones at different altitudes. The moment the drones on the ground were vanished again, a sudden signal struck the ones floating up to seventy meters above and cut them off as well, but didn't seem to reach any beyond that. The visual was not as detailed as they'd like, but it was enough - the tips of large pincers and antennae and beady eyes. Ants.

The fleet maintained a perimeter around the entire system just in case, and spent half a day consulting professionals and former colleagues of the deceased scientists to get a better understanding of the current situation.

Two experiments the team had worked on before and supposedly continued when relocated to the new station stood out - metabolic acceleration, and unassisted neural interfacing via modified brain waves. Far from the wildest here, such as the self-relocating giant sequoia, but ones that offered a plausible explanation.

Ants serve a variety of critical functions in the maintenance of an ecosystem, so naturally they are a part of most late stage terraforming efforts.

Here, however, something went wrong and they evolved alongside technology at an intimate level. Perhaps deliberately made to do so.

They are spreading fast too. Twelve hours ago the "carpet" of underground ants was roughly two square kilometers. Now it was close to three and a half. In mere weeks they may spread across the entire continent, perhaps make it across (or below?) the seas somehow and ravenously consume all life on this planet before succumbing to extinction themselves.

This world is bountiful. Also, we're here already. Hmm...

Eh, may as well. Plenty of us have seen Starship Troopers and only joined to hopefully one day shoot at alien bugs. Guess these are more like home grown critters, but whatever.

With that brazen attitude (and a quick orbital bombardment) the troop ships landed, well, were forced to crash land the final few meters, but whatever electromagnetic warfare these ants were throwing our way didn't account for reinforced alloy armor and hand-held rail guns. Their sharp pincers, acid throwers, and thick carapaces did however.

Actually, fucking hell, they move real fast underground. Uhh...

This isn't looking so good in retrospect. Did they add cockroach DNA in these bastards too? Some of them literally don't care about losing their head, what the fuck!?

Okay, holy shit, abort mission! Good thing we still install regular ignition engines as an added redundancy to the military ships. Not very fast or efficient, but screw you, burn beneath the thrusters. BURN!

*deep breath*

Okay. So. We lost 831 soldiers, and 4625 are injured. And the ant casualties don't matter cuz they're ants. Super mutant ants. Who are going to take over the world if we don't nuke them. Which might not work anyway because HUMAN scientists made them.

Hoisted by our own petard or something.

Right, let's just chalk it up as a... military exercise gone wrong and quarantine the planet. Wait, make that the whole system.

...so this is what it must've felt like to lose the Emu War...

[f1amboyant]

https://youtu.be/n-9u0AFMvl0?si=qBifR3sXPxmByXI_

Carlos looking fondly at that clip of Charles holding a snake because that’s how Charles looked like when he fell in love with him, yeah I’m delusional

Meaning Carlos fell in love in 2018, while Charles was still a rookie? Yep, checks out. Totally agree.

Also, I love that we got a good quality video of the fan forum. And that they used THAT pic?? I'm gonna go insane.

Thank you for sharing, anon!

[dungeonmessy]

What is your favorite species of ant?

Um the ants with the big juicy butt

velvet ants are also cool and shiny and pretty :3 I’ve probably eaten like at least 126 ants in my lifetime

[skydarcyedwards]

Myrmecia sp. Always fun to photograph. The first image is a very small image stack.

Sky Edwards

2023

Canon R7

Canon EF 100mm macro

Probably with my Raynox 250 diopter?

[ivyfox-illustration]

Some of my more recent portraits, and a DND inspired Tamandua! These are done in watercolor, and the black and white portraits were pen and ink, except for the tamandua which was drawn in procreate

[thefoilguy]

Bulldog Ant - Aluminum Foil Sculpture

[gumnut-logic]

Yes, I take photos of bugs as well :D

Top two photos took me a while to identify and I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I think this is a non-native beetle introduced to battle a St John Wort infestation in Australia, hence its name of St John Wort Beetle, Wikipedia - Chrysolina quadrigemina. Pretty nonetheless :D

The two beetles on the moss are likely some type of Christmas Beetle, though I really don’t have much of a clue. They were flying around, which is what attracted my attention. They landed, I photographed them, and they disappeared into the moss together. Likely doing something like the two Wort beetles above :D

The ant caught our attention because it was huge. These ants are at least an inch long. I’m used to seeing big black ones like that as we’ve had several nests in the garden (we had to eradicate them once we had children, that and Hubby had been stung several times, not fun). But I had never seen a red one before. This is a Giant Red Bull Ant. And he knew he was being photographed. These ants are very, very aware of humans.

And I had to take a piccy of the skink sun baking. Couldn’t help myself.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Australian spider ants are elegant little machines.

With their elongated legs and peculiar gait, ants of the Leptomyrmex genus are strangely beautiful creatures.  Almost all spider-ant species hail from our neck of the woods (eastern Australia, New Caledonia, New Guinea and parts of Indonesia), except for one: Leptomyrmex relictus, which somehow made its way to central Brazil.

Spider Ant (Leptomyrmex spp.) on Lichen, Fam. Formicidae, Oxley Wild River National Park, New South Wales, Australia

Photographer: Gerhard Koertner

[drhoz]

#2182 - Complex Technomyrmex albipes -White-footed Ants

Somewhat troublesome to ID - I'd originally been told these were T. sophiae, an Australian endemic apparently found in rainforests and mangrove creek habitats in Queensland, so I have a few questions about finding it as far south as Sydney, although there were certainly mangrove creeks a kilometer or so away, and the park was noticeably damp.

It is more likely to be part of the albipes species complex, although that complex includes over 40 species including sophiae. Technomyrmex albipes itself is a horribly successful tramp species, originally described from Sulawesi but now found in Australia, Africa, North America, the Caribbean and parts of Asia. In the wild nests have been found under stones, around fallen wood and in tree stumps, in twigs, on tree trunks and up into the canopy, in more restricted spaces such as plant spathes (and once inside a ant-plant) and rot holes in wood. They also readily nest inside human-built structures, which is one of their qualities that makes them a pest. This variety of behaviour may mean that albipes needs to be broken up into yet more species - White-footed Ants in Florida have already been renamed as T. difficilis.

White-footed Ants both scavenge, prey on insect eggs, and farm sap-sucking insects, some of which are pests in their own right.

Colonies include both winged and wingless males, and three types of female - queens, intercastes and workers. New colonies are founded by winged females after a nuptial flight, who then find a suitable nesting site and start laying eggs. However, she is eventually replaced by intercastes, who are mated by wingless males inside the colony. This strategy lets colonies grow to very large sizes, sometimes containing millions of individuals.

Mascot, Sydney, New South Wales

[antvnger]

Be right back, dude. I gotta go google this.

*comes back* Okay so! This is an Australian budgie for people who are ignorant like me

How pretty are they, huh? I really like it. I would fly around and hope people feed me because I’m so cute *laughs*

[groupwest]

so… my poppy caught the monster ant, somehow, while i was standing on the bed squealing… now i get to try and ID it.! pretty sure she’s a Giant Brown Bull Ant, and she’s not a queen at all, just a giant humungous soldier ant. and my rough estimate was pretty spot on, she’s almost 3n a half cm.

kind of really enamoured with her. still cannot get over the size of the beast! these types of ants, of the subfamily Myrmeciinae, are the most primitive of all living ants, the species which comprise it being some of the largest ants in australia.

this one, Myrmecia pyriformis or M. brevinoda, is certainly the largest in my area. it’s head is the size of the nail on my little finger. i don’t think i can ever recall seeing one prior to this, a most shocking, scary, and incredible discovery.!

…🐜

[vengoesbatshitcrazywithpolls]

MEAT ANT POLL

Also known as the gravel ant. Just guess if you’ve never specifically counted

[hacksawboy]

am i really supposed to believe these doctors and lawyers just keep fucking guns in their drawers at all time.

[tiixij]

trying to convince my ecology professor that Road to Ninja: Naruto the Movie is actually a documentary that has a lot to do with ecology so I can watch that for this assignment instead of something about zebras narrated by an english guy