Photo: Eastern Ant Cricket, Judy Gallagher
During the pandemic we’ve had to cancel our regular wildlife surveys but some long-time participants are going out individually on an ad hoc basis to continue collecting data. Judy Gallagher is one of those folks who also captures photos of what she sees, in particular the less common species. Here are two observations from her most recent survey.
Social insects are fascinating. In an ant colony such as the Cocktail Ant colony pictured here, there are one or more queens, whose job is to reproduce. The large ant with wings at the right is a queen. The smaller winged ant at the top is a male. He only lives a couple of weeks, just long enough to mate with the queen. The other ants in this picture are workers, and their job is to ensure that the colony runs smoothly, procuring food, getting rid of waste, raising the young, etc. and in some ant species, laying unfertilized eggs that will become male ants.
Cocktail Ants, Judy Gallagher
But sometimes other insects live within the ant colony. The brown blob near the bottom right of this picture is an Eastern Ant Cricket. These crickets live in ant colonies and can't survive for long outside of one. Ants recognize members of their colony by their chemical "signatures,” hydrocarbons on the outside of their bodies. Eastern Ant Crickets disguise themselves by rubbing their bodies with ant secretions so that they smell like ants. They live off food within the ant colony and will even try to get food by massaging the ants' mouthparts. This interesting drama was seen on the June 25 wildlife survey at Julie Metz Wetlands.
Eastern Ant Cricket, Judy Gallagher