Clonal Raider Ants Ooceraea biroi

Clonal Raider Ants, Ooceraea biroi (formerly Cerapachys biroi), are tiny, cryptic ants with a number of features that make them stand out in the ant world.

April Nobile / © AntWeb.orgCC-BY-SA-3.0 from Wikimedia.

First of all, they don’t have a separate queen and instead the workers can reproduce asexually, laying eggs that become more workers (hence the name “clonal.”)

Like other army ants, they have a distinct foraging phase (nomadic) and a reproductive phase (statary). They also lack eyes.

The raider part of their names comes from the fact they enter nests of other ant species and steal brood as their primary source of food.

Dr. Daniel Kronauer at the Rockefeller University sees the potential usefulness of this species. He is exploiting genetics and neurobiology to tease apart ant social behavior. You can see more about his work in the video.

 

(This video is a share and is larger at Scientific American.)

Sounds like a fascinating system to study.

Is it Veromessor pergandei or Messor pergandei?

I mentioned in recent post that the black harvester ants Messor pergandei are also reported in the older literature as Veromessor pergandei.

After seeing a 2017 article which used the name Veromessor, I decided ask for an update from one of the authors, Dr. Christina Kwapich, who is currently at Arizona State University.

Dr. Kwapich was kind enough to explain that the status of the name had been up in the air until Ward et al. (2015) used DNA techniques to sort it out during a major revamping to the ant subfamily Myrmicinae. So, Veromessor pergandei it is.

Check out Dr. Kwapich’s research on Veromessor in this video.

Ant research at Arizona State University from ASU Now on Vimeo.

She let us know that she’s doing some work on worker size and nest architecture that will come out this summer. We’re looking forward to it.

Kwapich, C. L., Gadau, J., & Hölldobler, B. (2017). The ecological and genetic basis of annual worker production in the desert seed harvesting ant, Veromessor pergandei. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 71(8), [110]. DOI: 10.1007/s00265-017-2333-1

Ward, P.S. S. G. Brady, B. L. Fisher, T. R. Schultz. (2015). The evolution of myrmicine ants: phylogeny and biogeography of a hyperdiverse ant clade (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Systematic Entomology. 40 (1): 61–81. DOI: 10.1111/syen.12090

Ant Neighbors: Pogonomyrmex rugosus and Messor pergandei

A friend is building a new house and he wanted to know about the ant colonies he found in his yard.

Photograph by Bill Webster

These shiny black ants are Messor pergandei (also seen in the literature as Veromessor.) They are a type of harvester ant, which means they collect, process, and store seeds as their main food source (See previous post).

Nearby was another ant colony.

Photograph by Bill Webster

Although these ants look similar superficially to those above, on closer inspection their bodies are dark maroon-red rather than black, particularly in the mid section. They also have fine parallel grooves on their heads. Theses ants are harvesters known as Pogonomyrmex rugosus.

Although both these species harvest similar types of seeds, it is not uncommon to find them living near each other. Robert Johnson (1992) suggests that they may segregate over broad regions based on soil texture, but coexist together in regions of overlap.

Some of Bill’s earlier photographs showed the ants had placed a ring of wood fragments from construction as a barrier around their colony. It would be interesting to see whether they were reacting to conspecific colonies or those of other species.

Wouldn’t it be cool to have ant neighbors like these?

For more information:

Kwapich, C.L., Gadau, J. & Hölldobler, B. (2017) The ecological and genetic basis of annual worker production in the desert seed harvesting ant, Veromessor pergandei.
Behav Ecol Sociobiol 71: 110. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-017-2333-1 (link)

Johnson, R.A. (1992) Soil texture as an influence on the distribution of the desert seed-harvester ants Pogonomyrmex rugosus and Messor pergandei
Oecologia 89: 118. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00319023 (link)

Johnson, Robert A. 1991. Learning, Memory, and Foraging Efficiency in Two Species of Desert Seed-Harvester Ants. Ecology 72: 1408- 1419. (link)

Rissing, S.W. (1988) Dietary similarity and foraging range of two seed-harvester ants during resource fluctuations. Oecologia 75: 362. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00376938 (link)