What do western harvester ants eat

Larvae hatch from eggs and develop through several stages instars. Larvae are white and legless, shaped like a crookneck squash with a small distinct head. Pupation occurs within a cocoon. Worker ants produced by the queen ant begin caring for other developing ants, enlarge the nest and forage for food.

Worker ants can give a painful, stinging bite, but are generally reluctant to attack. Effects of the bite can spread along lymph channels and can be medically serious. Harvester ant workers commonly are sold for ant farms. Worker ants remove vegetation in circular areas or craters around nests.

Colonies occur in open areas and usually have a single central opening. The area around the opening usually has small pebbles deposited on the soil surface by the worker ants. Often there is no vegetation within a 3- to 6-foot circle around the central opening of the colony, and along foraging trails radiating from the colony.

Colonies usually are widely separated; however, heavy infestations in pasture and rangeland can reduce yield. Red harvester ants also colonize in ornamental turf areas where their presence may be undesirable.

They do not invade homes or structures. Red harvester ant foragers collect seeds and dead insects and store them in the nests as food for the colony.

Red harvester ants are native species and are generally not considered to be serious pests. Consider the option of not controlling these ants, especially in areas inhabited by the few remaining horned lizards see box.

Photo by April Nobile from www. Harvester ants live up to their name. Like a farmer bringing in a crop of grain, the ants are busy seed collectors. In some habitats they are the dominant seed predators. But do harvester ants play favorites? When faced with a cornucopia of seeds, do they select certain species over others like a kid picking all of the chocolate chips out of the trail mix?

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside set out to find out if one harvester ant species, Pogonomyrmex rugosus , selects seeds in proportion to their availability or if it has preferences. The research started with some basic observations. What types of seeds were the ants harvesting and bringing back to the colony? Briggs also estimated seed availability in the foraging patch soon after it was established and after it was abandoned by the ants.

This allowed the researchers to determine if the ants had had an effect on the seed bank defined here as seeds on the surface of the soil. Getting a good look at what the ants carried back to the nest required Briggs to get up close and personal, with his face about 30 cm or so from the trunk trail.

Luckily, the ants did not appear to mind. They did object when his feet and other body parts got in their way. Unfortunately for Briggs, Pogonomyrmex venom is believed to have evolved for defense against vertebrate predators. Briggs says the sting he received from one P. As they progress along trails the scout ants leave scent markers so that the worker ants that follow will be able to track them and collect any food that has been recovered.

Ants will follow the existing trails that emanate from the mound until they end, if no food is found on the existing trail then the ants will continue out from the existing trails in varying directions with one ant per direction. These scout ants that forge new pathways are looking for new supplies of food to mark for the worker ants to bring back to the colony. Food is brought back to the colony where it is hoarded in stores. The middens are all female ants as are the workers.

The middens clean the colony by removing dead ants and taking them to an area of the colony that humans would recognize as a trash pile. Within a trash pile are dead ants as well as various other items that the ants consider trash and wish to remove from the active colony. It is through this assignment of roles within the colony that the ants maintain such an ordered hierarchy in their society.

With each ant having a specific duty there is no question as to where each ant should be during the daily routine. The hierarchy of the red harvester ant colony begins, like many other insect hierarchies, with the queen. The queen is a winged alate an ant capable of mating that has been fertilized by a male alate. The males generally die after mating and the queens leave to begin their own colony.

The queen red harvester ant is the source of the worker ants within her colony and throughout her lifetime she will continue to produce worker ants. A queen red harvester ant can live anywhere from one year up until approximately twenty years , all the while producing worker ants to populate her colony.

Although red harvester ants are utilized in many ant farm businesses the ants that are shipped to individuals wishing to begin their own ant colony are only worker ants and therefore the colony will eventually die out. It is illegal within the United States to ship a queen red harvester ant because if she escaped and began a colony in a non-native area it could become quite a problem for the new area she inhabits.

While ant farms can survive for months at a time without a queen they will not survive indefinitely due to the lack of reproduction within the all female colony of worker ants. In the wild red harvester ant populations seem to be on the decline. Many biologists believe that the red harvester ants are being pushed out of their territory by imported red fire ants and argentine ants. These two varieties of ant are not native to the areas where the red harvest ant lives; however, they are particularly invasive and are providing a lot of competition for the red harvester ants when it comes to feeding.

With more competition for their food supplies the population of red harvester ants is dwindling. These horned lizards feed almost exclusively on red harvest ants and in areas where the horned lizards have become a protected species the red harvest ant population is lower.