Honey pot ants
Honey pot ants or honey ants are species of ants that store food in their guests .
Behavior and nutrition
Most species live in arid habitats and feed on honey-like excretions from gall apples of the dwarf oak or honeydew from aphids .
If the food supply is high, the ant colony turns off workers who take in so much food that their goiters swell and their abdomen swells up like a barrel. So they hang motionless from the ceiling and look like honey pots. If there is a shortage of food, they can release the stored food again. To do this, a normal worker signals the need by rubbing the antenna of a storage ant. This then chokes out a drop of food that the other ant can take.
Systematics
The term "honey pot ants" does not refer to a specific species of ants, but is a collective term.
Examples:
- Myrmecocystus spec. in North America. More than 1500 honey pots were countedin a nest of Myrmecocystus melliger .
- Camponotus inflatus
- some species of Leptomyrmex in Australia, New Caledonia, and New Guinea
- Plagiolepis trimeni in KwaZulu-Natal
- Melophorus bagoti and Melophorus cowlei in the Australian deserts.
Intermediate forms occur in the genera Erebomyrma , Carebara (formerly Pheidologeton ), Prenolepis and Proformica .
Use by humans
When we talk about honey pot ants, we usually mean those that are consumed by the Australian natives, the Aborigines . The ant species Camponotus inflatus is particularly preferred because it has the sweetest “honey”.
literature
- Hölldobler & Wilson : The Ants . Springer (1990) ISBN 3-540-52092-9
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Honey Ant Adaptations. In: National Geographic. Retrieved September 6, 2016 .