Meat Ant at Hughes, ACT
Identification history
| Iridomyrmex purpureus | 20 Feb 2018 | MichaelMulvaney | ||
| Unidentified | 13 Feb 2018 | JackyF |
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User's notes
Handsome anthill about 80cm high, smooth on top, no gravel. Medium size ants, sorry I could not get a better close-up.
6 comments
KimPullen
wrote:
20 Feb 2018
The ants are meat ants (Iridomyrmex purpureus), but they are not responsible for the mound, which was made by termites.
JackyF
wrote:
22 Feb 2018
Kim - Thanks very much. Can you tell if termites are still living in the mound? Do you know what the ants are doing on it? We have been puzzling about it. Cheers, Jacky
KimPullen
wrote:
23 Feb 2018
Jacky - I can't say what the ants would be doing on the mound, I can't see how there would normally be any food on the surface of it. The mound does look quite sound (except for the hole at the lower left), which suggests it's occupied by termites. You could make a hole in the side of it to expose the galleries - if termites are home they will rush there (from inside) to defend and repair it. But the meat ants will also attack them. Regards, Kim.
DonFletcher
wrote:
12 Aug 2019
There seems to be constant war between termites on one side and meat ants and sugar ants on the other. The ants commonly take over the termite mounds but I have seen one mound revert to termites. Both locally common mound building termite species seem affected.
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Nearby sightings
Location information
- Coordinates 149.102280-35.327585
- Maps Red Hill Nature Reserve
- Places Hughes, ACT
Sighting information
- 16 - 100 Abundance
- 13 Feb 2018 08:38 AM Recorded on
- JackyF Recorded by
Additional information
- near gum saplings Associated plant
- 5mm to 12mm Animal size
Species information
- Iridomyrmex purpureus Scientific name
- Meat Ant Common name
- Not Sensitive
- Local native
- Non-invasive or negligible
- Up to 963.87m Recorded at altitude
- 574 images trained Machine learning
- External link More information
Record quality
- Images or audio
- More than one media file
- Verified by an expert moderator
- Nearby sighting(s) of same species
- GPS evidence of location
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- Additional attributes
