@futurebird Thank you, very much. I'm going to look them up. I'm fascinated by the behaviours of ants.
I'm heading back to one of my fave regional parks soon - for nature hiking & to check up on a few thatching ant colonies. I love those ants & have spent hours just watching them work. They're amazing! I'll update with photos & videos, after.
At this time of year the Prunus trees, and certain others which must have sweet flowers, become highways for Prenolepis imparis ants. There is a line of ants going upwards, and another one of repletes coming down fat with nectar.
Found a few Ponera pennsylvanica under a rock in the garden! These curious ants are small and sinuous and slender, so at first glance they seem almost worm-like, like rove beetles (Staphylinidae), quite unlike the Crematogaster I usually see.
Apparently there's an ant war going on in my yard! 3mm or so in size there are clearly two types of ants going at it, I thought it was one group gathering food but nope, that's a war! Also that's what a Canon 180mm L macro lens can do in terms of depth, I can follow one tiny ant as it runs about using the focal ring only. The pic on the bottom has the two ants fighting but it's focused a couple of millimeters past them, the one on top brings them into focus.
Nice photos! When you see little brown ants fighting on a sidewalk it's nearly always Tetramorium immigrans. The pavement ant.
I'm tempted to say that's the only species here, but the photos aren't close enough to tell. They are doing the "mandible locking" move that these colonies tend to do when fighting each other.
There are some stills showing how they lock mandibles and hit each other with their antennae... they don't always kill each other...
Cool! I took a bunch more and they're all essentially the same color but their butts and heads are a little different, one possibly group looks more rounded to me. So if it's all one species is it two different nests that woke up close to each other temporally?
That isn't pavement, it's sandstone slabs in Colorado but I'd guess that the strategy and likely species is the same.
Thanks! I'll post more as I get better with this lens.
Daily life of the Asian Weaver Ants (Oecophylla smaragdina). First, a couple of cute sisters. These inquisitive ladys had to poke their heads out to see what was approaching their nests. Moments later they were lined up with mandibles wide and abdomens flinging formic acid at me. But it started cute and intimate.
Next, an attentive farmer wondering why I am getting so close to its cattle.