Warning: large video. May take a few seconds to load.
This has been the scene on my front lawn for the past few evenings. Basically, every day in the late afternoon a large swath of ants - not going anywhere in particular or consuming any resource that I can detect - seems to form in the same general region of my front yard in Durham, North Carolina. When I get up to run in the morning and the yard is shaded, they are still there; but as soon as the hot summer sun hits the front lawn they have disappeared. In the evening, when the lawn is again shaded, sure enough - they reappear. Any comments on this peculiar phenomenon are welcome!
Saccularina sp.
17 hours ago
6 comments:
Surely Alex Wild of Myrmecos can help!
Pavement ants- Tetramorium sp. What you are seeing is a large, mostly ritualistic battle between neighboring colonies. It's one of the more spectacular ant phenomena.
Both sides send out as many workers as they can muster and the resulting pile-up helps colonies figure out the strength of their competition. Then they can adjust their territories accordingly.
This is an introduced species from Eurasia that is now common in temperate-zone urban areas worldwide.
Cool video- thanks for posting!
As of this morning, the battle has been ongoing for over four days, although as I noted in my post the ants seem to disappear during the day.
That must be when the drinking of the whisky and eating of the haggis happens.
I just posted a parasite of pavement ants over at "Parasite of the Day."
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