• Eciton (army ant)
o 200 different species
o Living nest with millions of ants
o While on a hunt, some for lines up to 100 meters long
o Killing & dismembering every insect or small vertebra they encounter
o The biggest hunting parties can kill up to 500K animals per day
• Neotropical Army Ants specialize in hunting and consuming insects, especially:
o Termites
o Wasps
o Ants
• Wasps
o bigger and stronger than individual ants, will kill a few, but quickly overwhelmed
o If queen survives, army ants steals larvae and quickly devour, no recovery
• Army ants
o When they discover another colony, they immediately attack
o Act as a social unit, they are especially dangerous and effective
o Overwhelm with numbers before victim colony can mount effective defense
o army ants don’t fight army ants, if encountered, they ignore and move away
• Types of army ants
o Army and soldier
o Bullet ant
o Giant Amazonian ant
• Pheidole desertorum defense:
o Immediately evacuate nest when they notice army ants
o Carry as many larvae as they can in order to return and rebuild after attack
• Pheidole obtusospinosa defense:
o Worker classes have big square heads
o Used to block entrances to nest when army ants show up
o Attackers give up after a while
• Leaf cutter ants (Atta cephalotes)
o largest and most complex societies
o Nests are several meters deep and harbor millions with a division of labor
o Compartments consist of:
Refuse
Brood chambers
Fungus gardens
o Soldiers are 100x larger than workers, sole purpose to defend against army ants
o Nemesis is Nomamyrmex esenbeckii
• Nomamyrmex Esenbeckii
o Diet consist of larvae of other ants
o Compared to other army ants, they have a more robust soldier class
o Short, bulky appendages
o Heavy armor
o Only species that can successfully attack a mature colony of leaf cutters
o When they find a leaf cutter colony, hundreds of thousands attack in a long column
o Attackers swarm leaf cutters and try to sting to death in a mob
o Still superior in numbers
o If leaf cutters do not repel army ants or barricade entrances, army ants swarm and overrun everything, steal larvae
• Leaf cutter defense:
o Enter crisis mode
o Soldiers swarm to site of attack
o “Front line” develops, up to a few meters wide and one meter deep with ants
o Soldiers go head-to-head, try to cut off heads
o Smaller leaf cutter workers try to help by ripping legs of enemies
o Workers create barricades to seal off as many entrances as possible to secure
Types of battles
• Skirmishes
o Smaller, quicker battles
• Raids
o Larger, longer, and more complex battles
• Invasions
o Full-out invasions, and take-overs of other colonies