Collect ant colonies using army ants

Studying ants often requires collecting colonies from the field. Traditionally, the shovel has been the main tool of choice for the task. Digging entire colonies out of the ground can be terribly hard when the soil is hard or rocky or the nest spans deep into the ground. This will show you a better method of collection; how to use army ants to collect colonies of other ant species.

Why?
See http://www.insectscience.org/8.71/ for more detailed description and reasoning.

Step 1 Pick an ant species

Find out if army ants (subfamily: Ecitoninae) co-occur with your ant species of choice. A good resource for this is http://antweb.org/.

You will be utilizing an evacuation escape behavior of ants that are preyed upon by army ants. Not all ant species that are preyed upon by army ants have this response behavior, but several species do. With a little natural history literature research or field observations should be able to find this out.

In this demonstration we are collecting the ant Aphaenogaster cockerelli using the army ant Neivamyrmex nigrescens. Both are common to the southwestern US.

Comments

[onedenarius]

Very neat article!!! great info etc... thanks!

[Lftndbt]

LoL, that is awesome!! I really could have used those whilst obtaining my bullant colony.

[Arbitror]

Cant' one bit from a bull ant kill a human?

[Lftndbt]

No it can not under normal circumstances. I have been bitten several times before, it hurts but will not kill you. If you were allergic to the venom or swallowed one and it bit your throat on the way down, that would be different. I would get to the hospital quick in that case.

[Javin007]

Ugh! After reading this, I had to google what a bull ant was. All I can say is "NO THANK YOU." I'm not going to be able to eat lunch now...

[MozonTheGreat]

What a cute ant -Touches Ant- OMG Ouch!!

[Lftndbt]

LoL, I had several escape at once. They are very intimidating indeed, the bullants head can pivot to look at you. it can see up to 3m away and tracks you as you approach... Scary!!

[adrian_smith]

Yeah, those ants are frightening. I am sure they would have a different tactics for dealing with army ants, maybe intimidation...

[kingbirdy]

the army ants would be like, hup, to, hup, to, ATTACK! and then the bull ants would walk up and calmly tear them all to bits.

[godfreyandthandi]

yeah, pull out the m4's and cap their army asses...

[tuckerlancaster]

Awesome! I had this idea a while back when I learned about this interesting response. However, living in Atlanta, I've never come across the the army ants necessary to test it. It's great to see that it is in fact possible. Great instructable.

[NachoMahma]

. Great job!

[ralegg]

Wow, very cool! I wish I was conducting some kind of a study to see this! P.S. - E.O. Wilson came to my college a few weeks ago and I got him to sign my copy of one of his books! (E.O. Wilson is probably the most well known entomologist in the U.S.)