Ants' Corpses help New Spider species Protect Nest

A new species of Spider Wasp has been discovered in Jiangxi Province, South-east China. The discovery was made possible after using a unique method of defending its nest. Deuteragenia ossarium was named the Bone-House wasp, which uses the corpses of ants to ensure their protection from potential predators. The name is for the ossuaries that were used to store bones of the dead.

The details of the new species of Spider Wasp have been published in the journal Plos One. Michael Staab, one of the authors of the paper, left plastic tubes to build their nests in after he collected and opened the nests. He was surprised by the presence of dead ants filling the entrance to the nest. He found the same result in several different trap nests.

Staab noticed after the larvae hatched that all the wasps came from the same species. The species was defined as a new one by taxonomists.

It seems that the ant corpses' pheromones make the nest entrance appear to be the entrance to an ant colony, thereby keeping the wasp larvae safe. Scientists have come across the first instance of this kind of behavior in the animal kingdom.

Seventy three of the 829 nests that were collected by the researchers were containing dead ants within their vestibular cell. "These nests contained between one and six brood cells, each provisioned with a single Agelenidae spider", said scientists.

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The High-Flying Ant With a Bite Like a Bear Trap

There’s an invasive species conquering new territory in the southeastern United States. It has gnarly jaws, a formidable sting, and the ability to launch itself into the air like a bottle rocket. These insects are known as trap-jaw ants, and they could be heading to a backyard near you.

Most trap-jaw ants belong to the genus Odontomachus, named for their mandibles, or mouthparts, which are capable of opening 180 degrees.

“They look like little hammerhead sharks walking around,” said D. Magdalena Sorger.

Sorger has been studying these curious insects as part of her PhD research at North Carolina State University. She published a review of the trap-ant species living in the United States with co-authors Joe MacGown, Brendon Boudinot, and Mark Deyrup in the May issue of Zootaxa.

When Ants Go Marching

There are four species of trap-jaw ants native to the United States. Sorger and her co-authors were interested in the spread of an invasive and particularly aggressive species from South America called Odontomachus haematodus.

This species has apparently been living in North America for about 50 years, but new surveys show O. haematodus is on the move and now common across numerous states on the Gulf Coast.

What changed over the last half century? Sorger said the population might have been building up before it spread out, or perhaps changes to the climate provided conditions better suited to the species’ success.

Meet the Neighbors

You might think an ant with massive mandibles would be clumsy, but scientists have found that the trap-jaw ant’s bite is among the fastest known movements in the animal kingdom.

“Trap-jaw ants have little sensory hairs on the inside of their jaws,” said Sheila Patek, a biologist who studies the evolutionary mechanics of movements at Duke University. Patek explained that these hairs are linked directly to the muscles that hold the jaw open. “So they can fire those latch muscles even faster than their brain can process.”

Jumping Ants? Sort Of.

Grabbing and stunning prey aren’t the only things those mandibles are good for. When threatened, trap-jaw ants fire their bite against the ground with so much force that it hurls them into the air like popcorn out of a frying pan.

When a whole army of trap-jaw ants does this at once, Patek says it can get a little scary.

“The next thing you know you have this ant flying through the air that you can’t even see, it’s moving so fast, with a big stinger on the end of its abdomen,” she said. “It is really nerve-racking working with them.”

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The remarkable self-organization of ants

Give a colony of garden ants a week and a pile of dirt, and they'll transform it into an underground edifice about the height of a skyscraper in an ant-scaled city. Without a blueprint or a leader, thousands of insects moving specks of dirt create a complex, spongelike structure with parallel levels connected by a network of tunnels. Some ant species even build living structures out of their bodies: army ants and fire ants in Central and South America assemble themselves into bridges that smooth their path on foraging expeditions, and certain types of fire ants cluster into makeshift rafts to escape floods.

How do insects with tiny brains engineer such impressive structures?

Scientists have been studying the social behavior of ants and other insects for decades, searching for chemical cues and other signals that the insects use to coordinate behavior. Much of this work has focused on understanding how ants decide where to forage or build their homes. But new research combining observations of ant behavior with modern imaging techniques and computational modeling is beginning to reveal the secrets of ant construction. It turns out that ants perform these complex tasks by obeying a few simple rules.

"People are finally starting to crack the problem of producing these structures, which are either made out of soil or the ants themselves," said Stephen Pratt, a biologist at Arizona State University. The organization of insect societies is a marquee example of a complex decentralized system that arises from the interactions of many individuals, he said.

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Billions Of Rasberry Crazy Ants To Invade Southern Texas, Species Is ‘More Powerful’ Than Fire Ants

Houston is bracing for an incursion by billions of hairy, six-legged intruders. The Rasberry crazy ant, egged on by warmer weather, is expected to emerge from its winter hibernation and overrun the southern Texas city, and 20 other counties surrounding it, within the next few weeks.

The Rasberry crazy ant, named for the exterminator Tom Rasberry who discovered the ants in 2002, are originally from South America but are thought to have arrived in the U.S. aboard cargo ships in the 1930s. CBS Houston reports that the ants are known for their erratic behavior and their penchant for getting into and ruining electrical equipment.

They’re also more destructive and harder to manage than their cousins, the fire ants. The crazy ant has been known to fight and kill fire ants, even outpacing them when it comes to collecting food.

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Worker Ants Build Rafts to Escape Floods and Protect the Vulnerable Queen

When hit by floods, ants display an extreme ability to assemble together as a group and form floating rafts using the brood's buoyancy to save themselves as well as the queen.

The study led by researchers from University of Lausanne, Switzerland, reveals the strategy used by ants to face floods and protect the queen including the larvae and pupae. The researchers observed that the ants build floating rafts and use the whole brood's buoyancy and the recovery ability to lower the rate of injury and death.  Also they place the queen in the middle of the raft and protect it from all sides.

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Crazy Ants Use Formic Acid To Wash Off Fire-Ant Venom; Becoming Dominant Invasive Species In US Southeast

Tan-colored crazy ants can produce a compound that helps them detoxify wounds sustained in altercations with venomous fire ants, a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin has shown, adding that invasive crazy ants are rapidly displacing fire ants in areas across the southeastern U.S.

When a crazy ant is smeared with the venom in a fight with a fire ant, it secretes formic acid from its abdominal glands, transfers it to its mouth and then spreads it on its body -- a practice that makes crazy ants almost invincible in combat with fire ants over resources such as food and nesting sites. In lab experiments, the crazy ants that were allowed to detoxify themselves had a 98 percent survival rate, according to the study, published in the journal Science Express.

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ASU scientists discover that ants, like humans, can change their priorities

All animals have to make decisions every day. Where will they live and what will they eat? How will they protect themselves? They often have to make these decisions as a group, too, turning what may seem like a simple choice into a far more nuanced process. So, how do animals know what’s best for their survival?

For the first time, Arizona State University researchers have discovered that at least in ants, animals can change their decision-making strategies based on experience. They can also use that experience to weigh different options.

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Giant Ant Colony Excavated, You won’t believe what they build underground!

This abandoned ant colony revealed how genius these tiny creatures are. Ants live underground – we usually see a relatively small exit on the surface. But you won’t believe the structures they build below. A group of researchers, armed with tons of cement, will show you.

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Southeast braces for ‘crazy ants’ invasion

Researchers at the University of Texas are warning that the invasive species from South America has the potential to change the ecological balance in the southeastern United States, largely because the ants can wipe out colonies of what’s been widely considered the insect villain of the region, the fire ant.

The crazy ants, officially called “Tawny crazy ants,” are omnivores that can take over an area by both killing what’s there and starving out what they don’t kill, said Ed LeBrun, a research associate with the Texas invasive species research program at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory in the College of Natural Sciences.

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New ant species! Scientists uncover treasure trove...of ants!

A total of 33 previously unknown ant species have been discovered in Central America and the Caribbean. The nearly blind ants live in leaf litter and rotten logs in rainforests and are all quite tiny, each less than one-twelfth of an inch (2 millimeters) in length, according to new research. 

Scientists named about one-third of the ants after Mayan deities, said Jack Longino, an entomologist at the University of Utah, in a statement from the school.

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