I am very ignorant about ants but have a “live and let live” policy, presuming them all to be indigenous creatures residing here long before I came along. Methinks there are at least three species here. The smallest kind, about 4mm long, collect seed for me (see post of 2nd February 2011).
Then there are the medium-sized ones, 8 to 10mm long with a reddish head, which have a huge, inconvenient nest on the bare ground between my greenhouse and my potting shed. These nip any visitors not wearing shoes/boots (if I forget to give warnings), but their bite does not hurt much.This kind of ant have been busy over summer carrying Ruby Saltbush fruits (and are always very interested in my nail clippings when I clip them outside!)
Thirdly, scarily, there are the black Bull Ants which measure 20mm from front of face to pointed end of abdomen. I have been bitten by these on several occasions and each time the bite has hurt for days so I now avoid that part of the property.
Bull Ant antics, Newstead, 19th February 2012
This morning I noticed one of these Bull Ants on my verandah doing a strange kind of circling dance, with its hind legs up in the air. Was this a mating ritual? No, looking closer I figured out that the hind legs must be caught in a bit of spider’s web and the ant’s antics were merely attempts to escape. I was surprised that such a large insect, which could still move around a lot, could not release itself.
I couldn’t help thinking it looked quite exhausted, pathetic and desperate. I thought of the Robert Frost poem, A Considerable Speck (see ‘Reflections on Ecology’ section of this blog) and took pity on it. After taking these photos I got a ruler and chopped at the air above the tethered ant until it was set free from the invisible, super-sticky threads.
Bull Ant doing the 'Bamboo Dance' with a matchstick, 19th February 2012
According to the Australian Museum website there are 90 species of Bull Ants in Australia, all in the genus Myrmecia. If anyone can identify this one to species level, let me know!
Newstead Landcare Group will have a presentation on ants later in the year. Keep your eye on the ‘Events’ section of this blog.
Geoff Park
listeningearth
pkavanagh
EJ
francescincotta
darrylobryan
nathankwong
nungeena
john1055283
Frances – You are such a generous spirit! After some bull-ant bites – and doctors visits – I now have a no ‘bull-ants” zone close to the house and then I use small bamboo stakes to mark the other nests further out – just so I don’t forget they are there – and I have noticed they often wander quite a distance from their nests so the stake is a good reminder as I get closer to their nests to take extra care. I have at least 6 nests that I know about on my block – no doubt there are more yet to be discovered. Chris
Your medium ant is Iridomyrmex purpureus, (good fact sheet on it at the Aust Museum site http://www.biomaps.net.au/biomaps2/listing.jsp?q=fs&ta=Iridomyrmex&tt=GENUS ). You’re right – they bite but do not sting. They lack the painful formic acid which your myrmidons (bull ants) inject into the bite area.
Sorry, myrmecia is the bull ant genus – myrmidons are something else. See http://anic.ento.csiro.au/ants/biota_details.aspx?biotaid=37361
I don’t think bull ants are very brave,i once watched a tiny little black ant beat up a bull ant which limped away looking very sad and sorry for itself.
Certainly wouldn’t have been a mating dance! The males and females are winged when leave the nest, like other ants, and mate at something like feom 800 to 1000 metres.
We found ourselves among winged mating bullants on the lookout on Mount Tarrengower many years ago, and believe me, they are HUGE, About 3 times the size of the working females that you find around the bush – and your yard – as I remember (perhaps my memory of them has exagerated their size a little, but not much!
I had a play around with ant identification a couple of years ago. I needed a binocular microscope to get down to genus level semi-confidently, The guide I was using (Shantuck 1999 – Australian Ants Ecology and Identification by CSIRO) didn’t go to species level. The CSIRO Ants Down Under website can now help people get down to species-level, but there’s still a degree of witchcraft involved!