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.

2013 Best of Ants

Well it has been a bustling year this one. I've just realized I took a tone of photos this year, perhaps even more than on previous years. Part of the reason was that I went to three major events where I took lots of photos, and partly because I bought a new camera with a cool new snap on lens.

My anting year started with an unusually early war between two Tetramorium colonies. We had a warm spring and wet year so the ant activity was good this year.

Here is a colony of Camponotus castaneus which seems to have moved on to a new location. I'm not sure where or why but one day they were there and the next they vanished. They didn't reappear at all later in the year either so that's a shame. I really like this species.

The flowers in my meadow garden were the best they've been yet, and many of the species I've chosen secrete extra floral nectar. Here a Camponotus subbarbatus worker is nectar scraping. Basically they just run their mandibles along the surface of the bud to squeeze out what has to be only a surface thick layer of carbohydrates.

You have to wonder if the nectar is worth the effort but apparently after a few hours of doing this they've collected enough to fill their social stomach. Eventually one of the major workers of the colony would check in on them and trophallaxis ensued. Major workers can hold more food so they're used mostly as storage ants.

One of my rare plants, Purple Milkweed, Asclepias purpurascens, finally flowered this year... only to have it's nectar robbed by Odorous House Ants, Tapinoma sessile. This ant is hands down the most notorious nectar thief because this particular milkweed is covered in hairs along the stem which are supposed to secrete a sticky goo to stop ants dead in their tracks. No one told this species that because they robbed out all the flowers.

Testing out my new camera I got an image of what I think is Lasius claviger. The hairs on the gaster are randomly spaced out and not in rows the way they are with Lasius interjectus. 

 On the NJ Ant Together this year we found a few colonies of Northern Fungus Growing Ants, Trachymyrmex septentrionalis.

They weren't very active so next year I'll try and hit the location sooner. There were a few out digging though.

This was a test for me to realize just how varied one species can be. This is Formica pallidefulva which I have in my yard, but didn't recognize it here. I'm so used to them being a coppery brass color that it never occurred to me that there could be populations with such an abrupt color difference. I'm told they get even darker the farther north you go.

Their cousins live in considerably larger nests. Formic exsectoides for small super colonies in relatively well preserved woodland areas. I think the only thing preventing them from distributing farther is their appetite. In the short while we were there we watched them haul in caterpillars, cicadas, and wasps. 

Anywhere that you stepped on the ground, because our shoes disturbed the colony scent on the ground, the ants quickly swarmed the location. It didn't help that there were so many running along the ground that we couldn't help but step on them, thus releasing alarm pheromone.

Outside of their range there were a few foragers of Camponotus chromaiodes. Note the pubescence on the gaster as well as the dark shoulders (which is only consistent on the larger members of the colony). Formica forage during the day and the Camponotus take over at night.

Crematogaster cerasi tending some sort of aphid which had a liking to this Rudbeckia flower. This was the first year I'd ever noticed aphids on Rudbeckia that weren't bright red and on the stems. These were actually green and some seemed to latch onto the seeds or various nodes where they were being developed. The caterpillar here is some sort of inchworm or possibly a looper. These normally feed on the flowers to these plants but was cautious about approaching this flower.

The last thing of anting for the year was observing another one of my rare plants Gentiana catesbaei. Other members of this genus keep the flower tightly closed and it's only through bumblebees forcing their way inside that they get pollinated. This species oddly keeps the flower open and invites everything on in. This also includes the ants. In this case it's the tiny Nylanderia faisonensis though they didn't seem all that interested in it really.