24 hour ant

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24 hour ant
24 hour ant (Paraponera clavata)

24 hour ant ( Paraponera clavata )

Systematics
Class : Insects (Insecta)
Order : Hymenoptera (Hymenoptera)
Family : Ants (Formicidae)
Subfamily : Paraponerinae
Genre : Paraponera
Type : 24 hour ant
Scientific name
Paraponera clavata
( Fabricius , 1775)
Paraponera clavata (museum specimen)

The 24-hour ant ( Paraponera clavata ), also known as the tropical giant ant or Engl. Bullet Ant ("bullet ant ") called (McCluskey & Brown 1972, Young & Hermann 1980 etc.), is one of the largest ant species in the world. Your poison sting is considered extremely painful. It lives in South and Central America in the tropical rainforest .

features

The workers are 18 to 25 millimeters long and have a black, sometimes slightly brownish body. The queens hardly get any bigger, but they have a wider audience for egg production . The forelegs are gold colored, the body and legs are hairy. Paraponera clavata resembles a wingless wasp in shape . Paraponera has an organ in the guest with which it can stridulate loudly in case of danger or excitement .

Poison

Their sting administers the powerful poison ponera toxin . This paralyzes prey or repels attackers. In humans, the sting causes severe pain. The sting is known as the most painful insect bite ever. According to the stab pain index of the US entomologist Justin O. Schmidt , which describes the severity of pain on a scale from 1.0 to 4.0+, the insect is 4.0+. The pain is often described as being burned alive. They subside after about 24 hours - hence the name of the ant. Immediate treatment of the sting with ice water and subsequent intake of Benadryl capsules ( diphenhydramine , an antihistamine) alleviates the pain. The poison does not leave any permanent damage in the tissue.

Way of life

The Paraponera clavata is not aggressive unless it is defending its territory. She is considered to be very capable of learning and can find her way around well. The colonies house only a few thousand individuals and are rather small compared to other ant species. The nests are preferably created in the base area of ​​larger trees, in exceptional cases branch regions are colonized. Their diet consists of insects and parts of plants.

distribution

The species lives in equatorial America, north to Nicaragua , south to Bolivia . The altitude distribution extends to around 750 meters above sea level, in some cases even higher; the highest known find is located at a little over 1500 meters in the La Amistad National Park in Costa Rica. It is more common in Central America on the Atlantic side, but not entirely absent in suitable habitats on the Pacific side. The species is largely restricted to the classic lowland rainforest; only individual finds are available from other habitats such as the Brazilian tree savannah ( Cerrado ). Occurrences are tied to areas with very high, evenly distributed annual precipitation.

Parasitoid

The humpback fly Apocephalus paraponerae (a two-winged fly ) can recognize injured Paraponera clavata workers by the smell of escaping hemolymph and can approach them and lay eggs on them. This is a specific parasitoid , other species of ants are rarely attacked.

Systematics

Paraponera clavata is the only recent representative of the subfamily Paraponerinae. Besides her, only the fossil species Paraponera dieteri is known.

The fossil species Paraponera dieteri is only known from one worker and severely damaged remains of a second one. According to this find, the species is somewhat smaller than Paraponera clavata (but still at the lower end of the range of body size fluctuations of this) and otherwise extremely similar, which indicates a morphological constancy over about 15 million years since the deposit of Dominican amber , suggests. The following morphological distinguishing features are given: head somewhat narrower in relation to body size, thorns on pronotum somewhat smaller, body surface somewhat more wrinkled lengthways, postpetiolus reticulated, not smooth. From the island of Hispaniola, and the entire West Indies , which is extant type Paraponera clavata not been established.

Use for rituals

The giant ants are part of an initiation ritual for an indigenous group of people in South America , the Sateré-Mawé , who live in the border area between the Brazilian states of Pará and the Amazon . To this end, 200 previously anesthetized ants are woven into a glove made of plant fibers so that the poison sting protrudes inward. The boy whose initiation is being celebrated must then wear the glove on his hand for up to thirty minutes; this rite is considered a test of courage - boys who endure the pain of the stings can achieve leadership positions in the tribe. To earn this respect, this process must first be repeated up to 25 times in the boy's life.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Justin O. Schmidt, MS Blum and WL Overal: Hemolytic activities of stinging insect venoms. Arch. Insect Biochem. Physiol., 1, 1984, pp. 155-160.
  2. ^ Jon M. Harrison, Michael D. Breed: Temporal learning in the giant tropical ant, Paraponera clavata. In: Physiological Entomology 12, No. 3, 1987, pp. 317-320, doi : 10.1111 / j.1365-3032.1987.tb00756.x .
  3. ^ Allen M. Young, Henry R. Hermann: Notes on foraging of the giant tropical ant Paraponera clavata (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Ponerinae). In: Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society Volume 53, No. 1, January 1980, pp. 35-55.
  4. ↑ Christina M. Murphy and Michael D. Breed (2007): A Predictive Distribution Map for the Giant Tropical Ant, Paraponera clavata . Journal of Insect Science 7:08. doi : 10.1673 / 031.007.0801 (open access)
  5. ^ Brian V. Brown, Donald H. Feener Jr .: Behavior and host location cues of Apocephalus paraponerae (Diptera: Phoridae), a parasitoid of the giant tropical ant, Paraponera clavata (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). In: Biotropica Vol. 23, No. 2, 1991, pp. 182-187, doi : 10.2307 / 2388304 .
  6. ^ Paraponera. Tree Of Life web project, accessed June 10, 2007 .
  7. ^ Cesare Baroni Urbani (1994): The identity of the fossil Paraponera (Amber Collection Stuttgart: Hymenoptera, Formicidae. V: Ponerinae partim). Stuttgart Contributions to Natural History Series B (Geology and Paleontology) 197: 1-9.
  8. ↑ Vidal Haddad Junior, João Luiz Costa Cardoso, Roberto Henrique Pinto Moraes: Description of an injury in a human caused by a false tocandira (Dinoponera gigantea, Perty, 1833) with a revision on folkloric, pharmacological and clinical aspects of the giant ants of the genera Paraponera and Dinoponera (sub-family Ponerinae). Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo, vol. 47, no.4, São Paulo, July / Aug. 2005 article (Portuguese, English)

Web links

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