#myrmecophile

[collemblogging]

a rarely-encountered ant cricket (Myrmecophilus) among Crematogaster ants. these myrmecophiles are adapted to living in ant colonies and solicit food from ants for nourishment.

[humansbgone]

hello!! sorry i keep sending over a lot of asks, but in one of your posts where u answered an ask, u mentioned something about a myrmecrophile. if it’s ok to ask, what does that mean exactly?

Far more than I can explain here!

Myrmecophily - Wikipedia

A notable example:

Remember, Humans-B-Gone! should be serving as a launching point to conduct your own investigations into the wild world of insects!

[revretch]

trick or treat :3🪣c

And what a lovely blue treat bucket you have!

Did you know some ants communicate with sounds, sending vibrations throughout the substrate? The large blue butterfly's caterpillar mimics the sounds of a queen ant larva, tricking the ants into taking the caterpillar home and caring for it as one of their own larvae. Once there, the caterpillar proceeds to eat the actual larvae.

[futurebird]

More like "myrmecophilous roach man"

Ant man rides a queen ant. Makes him more like the little atta roaches that live with leaf cutter ants & who love to hitchhike on their backs.

Can admit "myrmecophilous roach man" lacks the same ring.

(they also absurdly cute... for roaches)

(photos by Alex Wild @Myrmecos on twiter)

[drhoz]

This beautiful little fly is Microdon amabilis, one of the Hover flies of the family Syrphidae.  It's very small, probably under 10mm. It can be seen ovipositing (egg laying) in and around an ants nest in the rotten timber of an old wooden bench in my backyard. The ants are Carpenter ants, Camponotus gasseri. The ants  seem a little uncomfortable about the flies presence. Not surprising given the larvae of  genus Microdon  will actually live within the ant nest feeding on the larvae and pupae of their ant host..

[humansbgone]

Poor Clef. I understand why the ants would be wary of an ant nest beetle, but I feel like I remember there being mention of accommodations for species that normally prey on other insects in some way. You know, so they don't have to eat people. Have ant nest beetle macrovolutes ever even been an actual problem for them, or are they just -that- paranoid, where they'll attack species whose protocules prey on theirs, regardless of how the macrovolute versions behave?

Clef's species was socially parasitic on another species of ant entirely, not the yellow crazy ants. This will be gone into in more detail eventually, but I will say this now: The ants' distaste for myrmecophiles has nothing to do with any kind of danger they might pose (the ants appropriated all sorts of dangerous macrovolutes and demivolutes to work for them), but sheerly the audacity of being "useless freeloaders." Even more so, the audacity of being useless freeloaders with the ability to *trick* them.

And the accommodation for carnivorous insects, as we saw in this episode, was just eating arthropods (like isopods) that aren't people (that is, not insects or arachnids).

Of course, this is only a stipulation of the *Swarms.* The Swarms bend the knee to the ants in all regards...and as we saw, *anyone* may be "processed for protein."

[humansbgone]

was in the latest ep bombardier (idk if they have a name so) was housing clef beforehand? like, "i gave you a home" and such, in a way to not let the ants know of clefs existence??

The bombardier vouched for Clef to join his Daughter Swarm, Bombardier Swarm. That’s a pretty big deal (especially for someone who is not a bombardier). Of course, it’s by far not the first time Bombardier Swarm would have helped someone of Clef’s ilk....

[drhoz]

Hover flies (family Syrphidae) of the genus Microdon 

It parasitizes ants and its larvae are so strange that they had been confused with molluscs or conchillas. Music: Atlantis by Audionautix (http://audionautix.com)