This Week in Anting 08/28/2017

Finally got around to visiting Turkey Swamp Park this year and a few other locations around that county. 

Formica integra, were still there with foraging "trunk" trails. These are well maintained trails made by ants that tend to be in the same place every year. The ground around them is actually compacted down, not from the weight of the ants but because they're so good at clearing everything else away it's on the compacted parts that stay. The trail also ventures underground every few feet.

Dolichoderus plagiatus, are a species I've been calling "cone ants" but that almost as generic as calling them "black ants." The cone though refers to a hump-like structure on their mesosoma. This isn't visible in the photo above but online images of them show it more clearly, see here. Of the four Dolichoderus species in the US this is certainly one of the most colorful. They have bright orange spots that are sometimes full stripes on the gaster which goes well with the rest of the body which ranges from red/brown to black.

Oak Trees were full of life. White Oak in particular was bustling with caterpillars and aphids being tended by ants.

Another tree I couldn't identify was loaded with sawfly larva.
 

The Formica exsectoides mounds are still there. They weren't that active though. We went on too nice of a day it seems because for once you couldn't hear the leaves rustling from millions of ants crawling around. (I want my money back!)

Plant wise, I found a stand of Swamp Loosestrife, Decodon verticillatus, which is an uncommon aquatic wildflower. It has a wide distribution across most of the eastern US and Canada. It was bustling with bees and several butterflies.

Trachymyrmex septentrionalis, the Northern Fungus Farming Ant, likes to nest in sandy soil along odd types of scrub land where strange plants tend to grow. Prickly Pear is the only one I could really identify but there were lots of odd plants that might be mosses or are low growing conifers that barely push out of the ground and have compound leaves.

We also found a few colonies in an adjacent field where a patchy not so lush lawn was grown... I'm not sure if it's patchy because no one's water and maintaining it, or because the tiny leaf cutter ants are slowly stripping it. Whatever the case, these are ants of dry sandy settings in full sun where resources might be limited. They thrive here because they focus on other types of food, namely a kind of fungus they maintain by fertilizing with flower petals, bits of foliage, and the frass of caterpillars and grasshoppers.

These are small ants verging on 3 to 4 mm long. And even within that the workers vary somewhat within the same colony.

As far as ants in the North East go they're easy to identify. Their heads have spines on them, and their mesosoma has several small sets too. Their color is a unique orange/brown tone and parts that verge on being purple.

 Also when they dig they also gather up the dirt in clumps, making their mounds somewhat unique.

 We also found lots of mushrooms.

The 4th Annual New Jersey Ant Together!

For the even I bought some specially labeled tubes which I intend to hand out at these events. The idea being to put queen ants in them to get what I refer to as the "money shot" and try to sell the event and get more interest. I can use this as the banner image for future Ant Togethers.... but dammit if I'm not the worst ant keeper in the whole god dam world. Later on we're in the parking lot and of all the test tubes to fall out of my bag.... I ran her ass over!    Somehow she survived and upon putting her in another tube she seems to have recovered well, a little twitchy though. I believe she is the dark form of Formica pallidefulva which is more common in this part of New Jersey. It's odd how just a little bit south this species becomes a brassy brown tone. We found colonies of both color forms around but the darker one was by far more common.


This one made it to the car!


Camponotus chromaiodes. (Same ant as seen above) This is typically the dominant Camponotus species in the forests here.


We also found a parasitic Formica wondering which I still need to ID. We actually didn't find any colonies of this at that location so it might be one of the more exclusive slave making kind such as F. pergandei. (Their colonies always require host Formica and never grow beyond what they can capture.)



Finding a colony of Pyramica was something of a highlight because it's not commonly found in suburban habitats.



Slightly less of a highlight but still interesting was this patch of bright white sand where colonies of Dorymyrmex were located.


This sand patch is also where a dried out sort of sphagnum moss was growing which we tried not to disturb. There were some large colonies of Monomorium there too.


Just up the trail we found a Pine Snake.


I liked our first location a lot because Wild Blueberries were coming into season. I'd never realized how much better Low Bush Blueberry tastes compared to High Bush because the plants grow in full shade the berries are at a more reasonable temperature. High Bush blueberry is more of a forest edge, full sun plant, thus the berries have a sharp taste to them unless chilled.



Sweet Fern was also growing all over the place along with droves of other types of ferns. This one in particular is adored by gardeners because the leaves have a pleasing smell to them.


I was calling this Wintergreen all day but now that I google it I'm not convinced. Anyone know what this is?


I also got to see Red Milkweed, Asclepias rubra, which is one of the rare species not yet in mainstream cultivation. It seems to be a bog plant requiring constantly damp muddy soil to grow.


Ants actually really like Milkweed so it's one of the plants I pay attention to. Formica especially seem to like stealing the nectar from Common Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca.


This is the dark form of Formica pallidefulva I believe.


At our second location, Turkey Swamp Park, I'm happy to say they seem to finally be doing something with that wide open field. Namely just not mowing patches of it here and there so the milkweed gets to grow.


It's here where we found yet another species of Formica all over the flowers. And I think this is the same as the next one below... this milkweed patch was right between the F. exsectoides super colonies, and a population of some other Formica who's majors rivaled the size of C. chromaiodes majors.




What's neat is they actually had foraging trenches dug out that occasionally dipped down underground. And we found multiple trails like this coming from the forest to some plants that were growing along a lake/stream where they were tending to droves of aphids like an assembly line.


We found quite a few more Formica exsectoides mounds this years. They were far more active, like 10 times more aggressive, and very pissed off that I inserted an endoscope into their mound. The video didn't really come out though... kind of like a horrifying colonoscopy video really.




We also found Termites nesting just beneath the bark of a tree, and just below that a Crematogaster colony had a brood chamber which we broke into unexpectidly thus starting a small war.


This is a Dog Bane Beetle. I like that their feet are blue.


Frogs!


Frogs for days!


High Five?


Last of all found this to be an ideal time to go looking for Indian Pipe. This is a rare wildflower that you will only ever see growing in the wild. It's a parasite that requires a beneficial fungi to be prescient in the soil to exchange nutrients from an established tree, typically a 60' tall Oak.


Oddly enough though we kept finding it trying to grow beneath logs. Not just on one occasion but on several! Suggesting that the seeds somehow find their way under dead wood structures, or maybe this is where the beneficial fungus most often occurs?


Basically because it's a parasitic plant, it doesn't produce any chlorophyll, thus it's not green but rather a frail white.


After flowering, the plant almost sorts of melts, and shrivels up into twig-like stems.


Fallen leaves in a spot that floods on occasion, apparently dyed a silver tone from the algae or something growing on them.