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| Northern Fungus Farming Ant, a new species for me! One of my favorite insects, They're closely related to leafcutter ants and, like all the ants the taxonomic tribe Attini, they farm fungi! They are also the northernmost species of fungus-farming ant and are the dominant ant species in the sand ridge headquarters parking lot! They're what got me and my family to go to Sand Ridge in the first place. Seen here carrying a piece of decaying plant matter |
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| Note the two workers in the lower left trading food or something to carry |
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| Ants among this cool plant |
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| Two ants carrying dead leaf fragments (the one on the upper left is hidden behind its leaf). They feed the plant matter they forage to their fungus crop, which in turn produces nutritious growths to feed the ants. |
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| Carrying a grain of sand |
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| Carrying something into the hive |
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| The mounds are crescent shaped, semicircular, or uneven. Look for them in sandy areas with consistent weather, open forests, during May-September, in the early morning, in a triangle from Texas, Florida, and Maine. |
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| Note the moldy growth on the plant matter that the central ant is carrying. The ants have been cultivating and cloning the same fungus for 50 million years, the lack of genetic diversity make their crop very vulnerable to disease. Because of this, they have many symbiotic bacteria to produce antibiotics to fight potential pathogens. |
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| Ant and a weird thing (lower left) |
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| Ant and some pebbles |
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| A bunch of ants at the hive enterance |
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| Carrying some sand |
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| Many carrying sand |
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| A foot-wide, weed covered mound at the southeast corner of the parking lot east of the headquarters is the best place to look. |
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| Southern Yellowjacket queen |
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| The orange abdomen means that this is a queen! |
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| Crusin' |
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| Landin' |
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| She was investigating the opening in the oak leaf down and to the left of her. Maybe making a nest there? |
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| Nappin' Brown-belted Bumble Bee queen |
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