Diario de littleant

My name is Ann Mayo and I am currently completing a PhD in ecology at the University of Texas-Arlington. My research focus is the ecology of the Comanche harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex comanche, in the Fort Worth Nature Center in Fort Worth and the Southwest Nature Preserve in Arlington, Texas. I have a strong naturalist orientation (old school ecology). You can follow my research and more detailed natural history notes (with photos and videos) at: Ant Ecology and Other Adventures (onsnetwork.org/mayonotebook). However, I will keep simple observations here as well.

The Comanche harvester ant is in the genus Pogonomyrmex, which means "bearded ant" -- Pogono: bearded and myrmex: ant. One of the diagnostic features of this genus are several hairs found below the mandibles which is called a beard. The Comanche harvester ant only nests in very deep sandy soils in prairies surrounded by oak forests. There are 5 states in which they are found: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas.

If you have observations about harvester ants, especially the Comanche harvester ant, I would like to know about it.

If you are in Texas and are interested in ants, I am part of a new research group, Ants of Texas, which is putting together a comprehensive species list of ants in Texas (including distribution and ecological information). Also, if you own property in Texas and would allow us to collect ants on your property, we would greatly appreciation the possibility. This is a long term project. We have a blog: texasants.blogspot.com

This was quite a surprise for me: I was observing a Trachymyrmex septentrionalis ant colony foraging and doing nest maintenance. I wanted to get some photos to share with folks. As I observed and took photos, I saw Solenopsis ants (fire ants) coming in and out of this nest. They stopped and interacted with the Trachymyrmex ants using their antennae and then entered the nest freely.

I collected some of the Solenopsis ants and brought them back to the lab to identify -- I was hoping these were Solenopsis xyloni, our native fire ant, and not S. invicta, the red imported fire ant. They are S. xyloni.

I alerted my friend Jon Seal, a professor and myrmecologist (ant biologist) at University of Texas-Tyler about this. Jon is an expert on Trachymyrmex. Jon has seen this kind of interaction as well but does not know if there is more to it. He thinks perhaps they just ignore each other. However, this kind of interaction rarely happens in ants. Different species typically avoid one another or interact aggressively. But as with many things in ants, we have been thinking they mostly act aggressively but are beginning to find situations in which this is not the case. I am wondering if there may be more to this -- but I'll let Jon look into that and I'll stick to figuring out about the Comanche harvester ant, they don't seem to be aggressive even among Comanche colonies...

In my first post, I mentioned the Ants of Texas Research group -- I should have been more clear. The Ants of Texas is a group of real myrmecologists, mostly at universities, who study ants for a living (so to speak). We just came together this past Spring (2013) to begin setting up a website and brainstorming on ways to approach this project. It is a long term goal to construct a good species list. Because most land in Texas is private, it is also difficult to sample ants. Please contact me (amayo@uta.edu) if you are interested -- you could send us ant specimens from your property for example. Thanks for your consideration.

I went back to the Trachymyrmex septentrionalis nest the day after observing Solenopsis xyloni, a native ant, coming in and out quite freely. Well, the Trachy nest is still there but no sign of the S. xyloni -- so, they were not sharing a nest. What S. xyloni was doing, I do not know.

In the Solenopsis (fire ant) genus, there are several small species generally called thief ants (like S. molesta which also occurs in the Fort Worth Nature Center). Perhaps, S. xyloni was acting as a thief ant. However, I did not observe any thieving behavior.