Veromessor
Images of Veromessor harvester ants in Arizona, USA. More coming soon!
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Veromessor pergandei
● Duval Mine Rd, Sahuarita [Pima Co], AZ USA [el. 882 m / 2893 ft] view location in Google Maps » ● 11/06/10 8:10AM sunny, air temp: 18°C / 64°F
When foraging, Veromessor pergandei workers typically retrieve seeds on the ground, which have fallen naturally. Occasionally however, they will remove seeds directly from plants. At this location we observed three workers clipping seeds from an unidentified grass species. This was a tiny percent of the foraging worker force active at the time, which numbered many hundreds of ants. Regarding the often-harvested seeds of the grass Schismus arabicus, S.W. Rissing observed "...'clipping' on less than 10 occasions (always by less than 5% of the current foraging force) during several thousand hours of field observations." [scroll down for additional notes/references]
ADDITIONAL NOTES/REFERENCES:
·Rissing, S.W. 1986. Annual Cycles in Worker Size of the Seed Harvesting Ant Veromessor pergandei (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology (1987) 20:117-124
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