Ant guest
As ants guest an animal (often Insect) referred that in the buildings of ants alive and well tolerated by the ants there. These are often harmless commensals , but some ant guests are also more or less harmful to the colony. Ant guests can belong to a wide variety of animal groups. Most of them are insects, but various mites and spiders also live as guests of ants. Some of these guests only live at certain development times, for example as larvae in the ants, others permanently. Some of the guests offer the ants delicacies in the form of glandular secretions, while others disguise themselves as ants in terms of smell and behavior.
Forms of coexistence
Due to the way they live together, a distinction is made between different forms of ant guests.
Synechthria or Syllestium
In this form of coexistence, the "guest" lives predatory among his prey. It feeds on ants, their larvae or the eggs of the animals. Some of these ant guests, such as the ant spiders , disguise themselves as ants and behave like them. Others live in ant burrows and are also recognized and fought by the ants as enemies, but can protect themselves from attacks by a thick protective coat, such as the caterpillars of some bluebells (Lycaenidae). The short-winged species Myrmedonia funesta in the European glossy black wood ant are particularly harmful to the ant colony .
For example, the myrmecophilic jumping spider Cosmophasis bitaeniata (Keyserling) camouflages itself by imitating the smell of its host Oecophylla smaragdina by releasing similar hydrocarbons . Cosmophasis bitaeniata receives the larvae from the mandibles of smaller workers of the Oecophylla smaragdina and eats them. There is no external similarity between Cosmophasis bitaeniata and Oecophylla smaragdina .
Synecy
In ecology, synecia is always a coexistence of several species, whereby these do not particularly influence each other. Accordingly, these ant guests are tolerated in the colonies and they do not harm the colony, or only very little, as they feed on the food supplies of the "hosts". To this group, various types of are springtails , larvae of Schwebfliegengattung Microdon or the leaf beetle species Clytra (such as ant-bag beetle ), crickets of the genus myrmecophilus (z. B. ants Grille ) Ameisenfischchen ( Atelura ) and the rove of the genus Dinarda . Larvae of the rose beetle often live in the periphery of the colony .
Symphyly
Some ant guests are not only ignored by the ants, they are even protected and often fed. These often offer their “hosts” nutritious or tasty glandular secretions. These ant guests include the rophies of the genera Lomechusa and Atemeles , club beetles of the genus Claviger and the caterpillars of some bluebells (often close relatives of the synechthric species, see above).
Parasitism
There are also some species among the ant guests that parasitize on their hosts . However, this form is often no longer referred to as the ant guest.
The parasitism begins with largely harmless mites of the genus Antennophorus , which sit on the ants and force them through regular irritation to spit out drops of food on which they feed. The mites of the species Laelops oophilus live with the larvae and are fed there by the workers. However, numerous other types of mites are bloodsuckers . In addition, internal parasites come as some larvae of parasitic wasps or different nematodes , especially the genus Mermes and metacercaria of small liver fluke that the ants as second intermediate hosts use.
swell
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Tzi Ming Leong, Vilma D'Rozario: Mimicry of the weaver ant, Oecophylla smaragdina by the moth caterpillar, Homodes bracteigutta, the crab spider, Amyciaea lineatipes, and the jumping spider, Myrmarachne plataleoides. In: Nature in Singapore , Volume 2012, No. 5, March 6, 2012, pp. 39–56 (PDF).
- ^ Mark A. Elgar, Rachel A. Allan: Chemical mimicry of the ant Oecophylla smaragdina by the myrmecophilous spider Cosmophasis bitaeniata: Is it colony-specific? In: Journal of Ethology , Volume 24, No. 3, 2006, pp. 239-246.
- ↑ Rachel A. Allan, Robert J. Capon, W. Vance Brown, Mark A. Elgar: Mimicry of host cuticular hydrocarbons by salticid spider Cosmophasis bitaeniata that preys on larvae of tree ants Oecophylla smaragdina. In: Journal of Chemical Ecology , Vol. 28, No. 4, 2002, pp. 835-848.
- ↑ Rachel A. Allan, Mark A. Elgar: Exploitation of the green tree ant, Oecophylla smaragdina, by the salticid spider Cosmophasis bitaeniata. In: Australian Journal of Zoology , Vol. 49, No. 2, 2001, pp. 129-137.