1 Meat Ant at Watson, ACT
Identification history
| Iridomyrmex purpureus | 15 Oct 2021 | JonLewis | ||
| Unidentified | 15 Oct 2021 | JaneR |
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User's notes
A lot of activity on ant nest shortly after the rain ceased.
Winged ants emerging from entrances, other ants milling around; big variation in size of winged ants, and behaviour.
Smaller ones stayed near entrance, but larger ones tended to emerge and turn around and go back in.
3 comments
JonLewis
wrote:
15 Oct 2021
Hi Jane, nice photos. The ordinary ants are workers (which are all non-breeding females), the small winged ants are males and the large winged ants are queens. Cheers, Jon
JonLewis
wrote:
15 Oct 2021
Hi Jane - actually, multiple princesses in this case. They are off to briefly find a prince (from another colony) and then found a new colony somewhere, becoming the queen of the new colony. Mature colonies produce many winged female reproductives and many, many males and send them out when conditions are good for nest foundation - after rain (when the ground is soft for digging a nest) and warm. Having said all that, some genera of ants do have multiple queens within the same colony. Cheers, Jon
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Nearby sightings
Location information
- Coordinates 149.172608-35.224678
- Altitude 627.1m
- Maps Mount Majura
- Places Watson, ACT
Sighting information
- 1,001 - 10,000 Abundance
- 14 Oct 2021 05:00 PM Recorded on
- JaneR Recorded by
Additional information
- 5mm to 12mm Animal size
Species information
- Iridomyrmex purpureus Scientific name
- Meat Ant Common name
- Not Sensitive
- Local native
- Non-Invasive
- Up to 963.87m Recorded at altitude
- 502 images trained Machine learning
- External link More information
Record quality
- Images or audio
- More than one media file
- Verified by an expert moderator
- Nearby sighting(s) of same species
- GPS evidence of location
- Description
- Additional attributes
