Meat Ant at Acton, ACT
Identification history
| Iridomyrmex purpureus | 25 Jun 2020 | JonLewis | ||
| Iridomyrmex purpureus | 25 Jun 2020 | JonLewis | ||
| Unidentified | 24 Jun 2020 | TimL |
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User's notes
A solitary ant attending to Wattle Tick Scale.
4 comments
alexwatt
wrote:
24 Jun 2020
Wow, this is such a good picture. What is Wattle Tick Scale then? Do the ants eat the juice or something?
TimL
wrote:
24 Jun 2020
Thanks Alex. My understanding is that the white scale feed on plant sap and excrete honeydew. This attracts ants which collect the honeydew and in turn protect the scale from predators. I'm no expert on this so maybe one of CNM's experts can confirm.
JonLewis
wrote:
25 Jun 2020
Hi Tim & Alex, yes, Tim's explanation is quite right. The plant sap that the scale insects feed on has mainly sugars in it, so to get enough protein and other nutrients, the scale insects have to process a lot of sap and end up with an excess amount of water and sugar which they excrete as honeydew - which is a free feed for the ants! Cheers, Jon
Location information
- Coordinates 149.108652-35.273657
- Altitude 625.0m
- Maps ANBG
- Places Acton, ACT
Sighting information
- 1 Abundance
- 19 Jun 2020 12:29 PM Recorded on
- TimL Recorded by
-
Collections
Insects Ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) TimL Canberra & Southern Tablelands NatureMapr
Additional information
- 12mm to 25mm 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
- 623 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
- Description
- Additional attributes
