Papyrius nitidus
Shining Coconut Ant at Theodore, ACT
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| Papyrius nitidus | MichaelMulvaney | 27 Dec 2020 | |
| Papyrius nitidus | patrickharvey | 22 Dec 2020 |
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4 comments
24 Dec 2020
Pat - thanks for the updated location - this doesn't look like the usual coconut ant which has a dark single tone abdomen. Did it have the coconut ant smell - the grass/carton construction or sapling "base camps"?
26 Dec 2020
Hi Pat & Michael. I can't really see the ant well enough to ID it positively. The light and dark bands on the abdomen are caused when the ant has sucked up a lot of honeydew, and the abdomen swells up like a balloon, exposing the thinner, more lightly coloured sections of each of the plates which makes up the abdomen. So it could be Papyrius, but the smell test would be important to confirm the ID. Cheers, Jon
27 Dec 2020
They definitely had the grass carton construction and smelled like coconut when squashed. I had photographs of the nests but there was some kind of issue when uploading the images
Location information
- Maps Melrose
- Places Theodore, ACT
Sighting information
- At least 1 Abundance
- patrickharvey Recorded by
Collections
- patrickharvey Canberra & Southern Tablelands NatureMapr Papyrius nitidus Ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) Insects
Species information
- Papyrius nitidus Scientific name
- Shining Coconut Ant Common name
- Sensitive
- Local native
- Non-invasive or negligible
- Up to 860.96m Recorded at altitude
- External link More information
Record quality
Quality score
3 / 7
- Images or audio
- Verified by an expert moderator
- GPS evidence of location
- More than one media file
- Nearby sighting(s) of same species
- Description
- Additional attributes