Silver ant

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Silver ant
Silver ants eating a camel tick

Silver ants eating a camel tick

Systematics
Order : Hymenoptera (Hymenoptera)
Superfamily : Vespoidea
Family : Ants (Formicidae)
Subfamily : Scale ants (Formicinae)
Genre : Cataglyphis
Silver ant
Scientific name
Cataglyphis bombycina
( Roger , 1859)

The silver ant ( Cataglyphis bombycina ) is a species of ant from the central Sahara . It bears its German name because of its shiny silver appearance. It lives in the arid desert , among insects it occurs in areas with the highest surface temperatures of over 60 ° C, such as Cataglyphis bicolor .

features

The animals are yellowish to light brown in color and, depending on the incidence of light, appear silvery shiny due to the hair (setae, long, single-celled, thread-like, strongly chitinized outgrowths), which is used for thermoregulation through reflection . These setae have a triangular cross-section and reflect light both in the visible and in the mid- infrared range (MIR). In addition, heat radiation in the MIR can be emitted to the environment via the hair.

Silver ants have longer legs than other ants. This allows you to keep your body at a greater distance from the hot floor.

Silver ants produce heat shock proteins , unlike other animals, however, not as a reaction to a heat event, but rather before they leave the nest. This protection ensures cellular functions even at elevated temperatures. The short time of heat exposure would be too short to reactively produce the heat protection. This means that body temperatures of up to 53.6 ° C are possible.

Entrance to the silver ants nest

Way of life

Silver ants love warmth . Even so, avoiding heat under the extremely high temperatures of their habitat is a major challenge. A second danger in daylight is the search for prey of fringed finger lizards such as Duméril's fringed finger lizard ( Acanthodactylus dumerili ). Because of these two risks, an ant only moves outside the nest for about ten minutes a day. They achieve running speeds of 0.7 meters per second, according to Harald Wolf from Ulm University, even 855 mm / s. The noticeably fast run keeps the period of ground contact short.

The diet consists mainly of carrion of dead flying insects that have been blown into the hot dry habitat and perish in the process. The ants are on the detection and recycling of dried insects adapted . To use this resource, they have developed their own behavioral repertoire. You always search individually. The search activity is day-centered with the highest running activity in the hot hours. Some scouts keep a special watch and alert the rest of the nest inhabitants as soon as the neighboring fringed-finger lizard has withdrawn. Then hundreds of the ants leave the nest almost explosively and only for a short time to collect dead insects.

In contrast to almost all other ants, silver ants only use pheromones to mark the entrance to their underground nest, not to mark paths. Like other Cataglyphis species , they use the position of the sun for orientation , which they recognize from the polarization pattern of the sky even in hilly terrain when the sun is low . In addition, the animals orientate themselves optically to landmarks and remember the distances covered depending on the spatial directions. This means that you always know the shortest route to the nest entrance.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b P. Moseley: Heat shock proteins and heat adaptation of the whole organism. In: Journal of Applied Physiology , 83, No. 97, pp. 1413-1417.
  2. ↑ Norman Nan Shi, Cheng-Chia Tsai, Fernando Camino, Gary D. Bernard, Nanfang Yu: Keeping cool: Enhanced optical reflection and radiative heat dissipation in Saharan silver ants. In: Science 349, No. 6245, 2015, pp. 298–301, doi : 10.1126 / science.aab3564 .
  3. ↑ a b http://m.phys.org/news/2015-06-saharan-silver-ants-electromagnetic-extremely.html
  4. ^ A b c P. Gullen: The Insects: An Outline of Entomology. , Blackwell Publishing, 2005, p. 160.
  5. ^ S. Chown: Insect Physiological Ecology: Mechanisms and Patterns , Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 162.
  6. ^ Nigel R. Andrew, John S. Terblanche: The response of insects to climate change. In: Jim Salinger: From Living in a Warmer World. Chapter 3, Bateman, 2013, pp. 38-49.
  7. ^ A b R. Wehner, AC Marsh, S. Wehner: Desert ants on a thermal tightrope. In: Nature 357, June 18, 1992, pp. 586-587, doi : 10.1038 / 357586a0 .
  8. ↑ The fastest ant in the world science.orf.at, October 17, 2019, accessed October 17, 2019.
  9. ↑ R. Wehner: Strategies against heat death. Thermophilicity and thermoregulation in desert ants (Cataglyphis bombycina). In: Acad. Knowledge Lit. , Mainz 1989, pp. 101-112.
  10. ↑ Life at the Extremes: Ants Defy Desert Heat
  11. ↑ Peter Duelli: Orientation of polarization pattern in the desert ant Cataglyphis bicolor Fabr: Formicidae, Hymenoptera. Diss., University of Zurich, 1974.
  12. ↑ Bruno Carlo Lanfranconi: Compass orientation according to the rotating sky pattern in the desert ant Cataglyphis bicolor . Diss. Ed .: University of Zurich. 1982.
  13. ↑ Karl Fent: Polarized skylight orientation in the desert ant Cataglyphis . In: Journal of Comparative Physiology A . 158, No. 2, 1986, pp. 145-150. doi : 10.1007 / BF01338557 .
  14. ↑ Thomas Labhart: Polarization-sensitive interneurons in the optic lobe of the desert ant Cataglyphis bicolor. In: Naturwissenschaften 87, 2000, pp. 133-136.
  15. ^ R. Wehner: The architecture of the desert ant's navigational toolkit (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) . In: Myrmecological News 12, 2008, pp. 85-96.
  16. ↑ Rüdiger Wehner: Desert ant navigation: how miniature brains solve complex tasks. In: Journal of Comparative Physiology A 189, No. 8, 2003, pp. 579-588, doi : 10.1007 / s00359-003-0431-1 .
  17. ^ DFH Grocott: Maps in mind-how animals get home? In: The Journal of Navigation 56, No. 01, 2003, pp. 1-14.
  18. ↑ The Amazing Cataglyphis Ant

Web links

Commons : Silver Ant  - Collection of images, videos and audio files