David Element
Wildlife Photography and Digital
Video Images
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Hymenoptera 71 – Garden Black Ants
GARDEN BLACK ANT Lasius
niger (f)
GARDEN BLACK ANTS Lasius
niger (f)
GARDEN BLACK ANT Lasius
niger (f)
GARDEN BLACK ANT Lasius
niger (f)
GARDEN BLACK ANTS Lasius
niger (f, workers)
GARDEN BLACK ANT Lasius
niger (f)
GARDEN BLACK
ANTS Lasius niger (f)
·
Garden Black Ants Lasius
niger will make their presence known, in no uncertain manner, whenever the
weather conditions are hot, still, and humid enough in high summer for them to
swarm. Suddenly these useful social insects will be absolutely
everywhere, with winged females (queens) and males (drones) taking to
the air in droves. These winged ants are collectively known as alates,
and their emergence and redistribution will enable new colonies to be formed,
thus ensuring greater genetic diversity. The females will only retain their
wings for long enough to enable mating to take place, and afterwards these
appendages will be chewed off by their owners as they are no longer required. Fertilised
females may survive for years after they have set up their new colonies, where
they will continue to lay eggs in quantity throughout their lives. The delivery
of sperm received during a single mating episode is sufficient to enable a
female to lay many thousands of eggs over a protracted period, so queens only
need to mate once. New workers, females and males will hatch at the appropriate
times of the year for the cycle to continue. The fate of the post-coital males
is more extreme, as once their purpose has been served, they will die, usually within
24 hours or so. These mass emergences produce a bounty for insectivorous and
omnivorous birds, and the author has watched European Robins Erithacus rubecula and House Sparrows Passer domesticus
come indoors in pursuit of one of these ready meals, usually hovering as they
pick their quarry from vertical surfaces! Many alates will be eaten as soon as
they have emerged, but the sheer number produced by each nest is sufficient to
overwhelm the appetites of even the most gluttonous of birds! Note that there
are several similar British Lasius species, more
than 40 species of ants in total, and that their identification to species
usually requires microscopic examination of their structures as it is often
impossible to see enough of the minute anatomical details in photographs to
obtain a certain conclusion.
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