Friday Pic #1: Harvest
As I was tidying my harddrive the other day (something which I must admit happens rather more often than tidying my home…) I stumbled across some rather nice photos from last summer. Definitely nice enough to share. And Fridays seem like the day to be sharing photos in the blog world. So here’s the first of what will hopefully be a recurring theme, Friday Pictures. (Because I’ve been known to occasionally dabble in artsy endeavours, I won’t limit myself to Photos.)
Anyone who knows me even a bit will know that my fascination for eusocial insects doesn’t just extend to honeybees, but all eusocial Hymenopterans. Although I know far less about the workings of an ant colony than I do about bees, I probably know more than the average person. However, what’s happening in the above image, I think most people with an interest in nature in general has heard of: Ants harvesting honeydew from aphids. Notice the shiny drop of liquid between the ant’s mandibles!
Aphids are passive feeders, the pressure in the phloem of the host plant often causing more sap to enter the aphid than it can digest. The excess sap is secreted as honedew. I don’t know the species of ant or aphid on the picture, so I don’t know whether they are in a pure mutualistic relationship where the ants protect and move the aphids, the latter only giving up their sweet harvest in response to the gentle ministrations of ants, or whether this is an example of the more casual kind of ant-aphid relationship, where the aphids release the honedew anyway.
On one occasion I have seen a couple of ants mobbing a ladybug threatening some aphids. Unfortunately I did not have my camera on me.
