Acacia ant, image, Acacia classification and scientific name. Acacia ant living place and Acacia ant relationship.
EXTRAORDINARY ANIMALS
Scientific name: Pseudomyrmex ferruginea
Scientific classification:
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Formicidae
What does it look like? This ant is a slim-bodied species, with the workers measuring around
3 mm in length. Th ey are orangey brown and have very large eyes.
Where does it live? This is an arboreal ant, and it is to be found on or around a certain speciesof acacia treesThe ants nest inside the large thorns of these acacias.
ACACIA ANT
A Relationship among the Thorns.
Acacia trees with their succulent little leaves are relished by a large number of herbivorous
animals from tiny insects to huge mammals. To protect their foliage from these hungry
mouths, they have evolved a number of ways to keep the leaf eaters at bay. Many acacias have
vicious-looking spines, while others have leaves packed with repellent and noxious chemicals.
Some acacias, however, have gone even further and actually depend on other animals for pro-
tection. One such acacia, the bull’s horn acacia, has its own species of dedicated ant bodyguard.
Th e relationship begins when a young queen ant, newly mated, lands on the acacia looking for
a place to start a nest. Th e thorns on this acacia are great little ant havens as they are bulbous
at their base and hollow. Th e queen, convinced by the odor of the tree that she is in the right
place, starts to nibble a hole in the tip of one of the thorns, eventually breaking through to the
cavity within. In the safety of her new nest she lays 15–20 eggs, and soon enough, these give
rise to the first generation of workers. The embryonic colony grows, and as it does, it expands into more of the bulbous thorns. When the colony has exceeded around 400 individuals, the repayment to the acacia for lodgings can begin, and the ants assume their plant-guarding role.
The ants become aggressive and do not take kindly to any creature they fi nd trying to sur-
reptitiously munch the acacia’s leaves, regardless of whether it is a cricket or a goat. It doesn’t
take much to set them off . Even the whiff of an unfamiliar odor sees the ants swarming from
their thorns and toward a potential threat. Herbivorous insects are killed or chased away, and browsing mammals are stung in an around their mouth, which quickly persuades them to look
elsewhere for less well-defended fodder. Apart from these active defending duties, the ants also
have gardening to tend to—they leave the tree and scout around its base looking for any seed-
lings that would eventually compete with their acacia for light, nutrients, and water. If they do
find any, they destroy them, and the ants even go so far as to prune the leaves of nearby trees so
that their host is not shaded out.
Not only does the tree supply the ants with nesting sites, but special glands at the base of the
tree’s leaves produce a nectar rich in sugars and amino acids that the ants lap up. The tips of
the leaves also sprout small, nutritious packets of oils and proteins (Beltian bodies), which the
ants snip off and carry away to feed to their grubs. The grubs even have a little pouch at their
head end which the Beltian body can be tucked into while they feast on it.
This is charming relationship between the ants and the acacias is as not as wholesome as it first
appears. The ants will repel most herbivorous insects, but they turn a blind compound eye tothe feeding antics of scale insects, which suck the sap of the host acacia, thus weakening it and
providing entry for disease. The ants tolerate and even protect the scale insects because they
produce sweet honeydew, which the ants relish.
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