Ant Hill Wood

This is an entirely new page where I have decided to place some of the fabulous pictures of ants from outside of the UK, all of which have been photographed by my many friends in other countries, some of whom are members of the Ant Hill World forum, the link to which is on my front page and in the links page.

The first set of photos are from a young friend of mine who lives in the USA. His name is Alex Ukrainets, and he has taken all of the photos which appear below on this paragraph. My thanks to him for giving his kind permission to use his really lovely ant photos, as they are well worth showing to start off this new page of my site. Thanks Alex, you have taken some great pictures of your local ant species.

This first picture shows a Formica species carrying a cocooned pupa.

 The next picture shows a winged female of the slave making ant Polyergus lucidus.

Note the sickle shaped jaws on this ant species.

These 2 pictures show Polyergus workers with slaves, what look like a species of Formica, as like most slave making ants Polyergus have become totally dependant on their slaves to feed them as their jaws have become no more than armour piercing weapons of war.

 A nice photo of a Callow (possibly newly emerged from her cocoon), and what a difference between this young ant compared to her older sister.

This great photo of Camponotus castaneus workers defending their nest against 2 majors of another related species (C. americanus) was taken by an entomologist. His name is Adam Lazarus, and I thank him for sending me this nice photo.

Alex has taken these lovely photos of a Camponotus pennsylvanicus queen he found near his home. The ruler scale is in inches to give some indication of this ladies large size, making this lady about 3/4 of an inch (approx. 21mm) in length as queens of this particular genera are very impressive indeed.

 Note her serrated jaws on this picture below, which although they inflict a powerful bite, can also be used to gently pick up her eggs, larvae and pupae. Most ant queens are extremely caring and very gentle mothers when it comes to raising their brood.

The 2 photos below show workers of the slave making ant Polyergus lucidus. Both were taken by one of the Formicidae Trackers, Edward Nordberg who lives in the USA. My thanks to Edward for allowing me to use his photos of this wild colony.

While I may run a web site about ants, I am also fascinated by other social insects, so I was happy to ask a new member of the Ant Hill World forum if I could use a few of his pictures. This collection of photos below were all taken by Quah who lives in Malaysia; and I'm sure you will agree that they do make for added interest on my site. My sincere thanks to Quah for allowing me to use his photos, as I am always happy to use photos taken by others as long as I have their prior permission to do so.

This first picture is of a Anochestus species worker ant 4mm in length.

The next ant is one of the tiniest ants in the world, worker ants belonging to the genus Oligomyrmex.

A Pheidole sp. Queen and brood.

  An alate female of the genus Pheidologeton.

For the final 2 photos, I have chosen to include these of the termite species Macrotermes gilvius. Often wrongly referred to as "White Ants", termites actually belong to the insect order Isoptera (Iso-ptera, from the ancient Greek isos = equal, pteron = wing); not the same as ants which belong to the order Hymenoptera (Hymenoptera is derived from the Greek words "hymen" meaning membrane and "ptera" meaning wings). Although all termites are social insects like ants, bees and wasps, they are more closely related to Cockroaches than ants. Note the large head of the soldier caste compared to a worker, much the same as occurs in many ant species which also have a soldier or super-major caste found in them!

A good friend of mine who lives in France keeps some really cool ant species. A link to his blog can be found on my "Ant Links" page. His name is Thierry Espitalier and he has taken these great photos below.

 First his Messor barbarus colony which has super-majors. Note how the head of a super-major surpasses that of the queen in size.

Next is his Camponotus maculatus colony.

Thierry's Camponotus cruentatus queen.

And here is his Camponotus nicobarensis.