I had so much fun with the mysterious lump of brown stuff from the other week that I thought we’d do another one.
I’ll give you two bits of information: first, this does have to do with insects. And second, it’s also from the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Ten points to the first person to tell me what this is.
The cumulative points winner for the month of March will win their choice of 1) any 8×10-sized print from my photo galleries, or 2) a guest post here on Myrmecos.
Good luck!
Well, my preliminary guess will be some sort of wasp/bee nest!
The Ecuadorian equivalent of an Owl Pellet?
it looks like nest material built by some Attini
It is a structure under which ants of the genus Allomerus decemarticulatus hide and wait for their prey to walk over the entrances.
Its made of fibers of their host plant Hirtella physophora, fixed with a symbiotic ascomycete fungus.
That’s so splendid, I hope it’s right – personally, I had no idea!
Woah, that’s so cool!
.rielrae sith no tosp doog a dah golB s’rechnumburcS .tcerroc eb yam uoy eveileb I
I know I know, it’s part of the carton that Allomerus construct in some myrmecophyte. The one I know is Allomerus demerarae and Cordia nodosa. It’s their special carton construction over the branches and domacia to sit and wait and ambush their prey!
Jan got the ant right and the fungal class (I think), but Roxana has the correct plant ID.
And while I’m at it, Dave’s backward spelling needs a touch of work. :~)
I did the best I could with the strangest bug I’ve yet experienced in Explorer 8. Not only did the type come in backwards, but if you didn’t type really slowly, the letters became dyslexic.
In any case, Scrubmucher had a nice post:
http://scrubmuncher.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/unsporting-ants/
I’ll add the link to the paper about this specific mutualism:
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/11/12/rsbl.2010.0920.abstract
It was open-access when I last downloaded it, but I lost the paper when I accidentally deleted my entire folder of publications from the RSPB just this weekend… 🙁
Make RSPB Royal Society Publishing. Sorry…
Well, I met them as Allomerus demerarae in southeast Peru. According to the antweb, it’s a senior synonym for A ortoartuculatus, that apparently is a subspecies of A decermaticulatus. This particular mutualism in southeast Peru was with Cordia nodosa, but this genus can built the same cartons in other myrmecophytes different from C. nodosa in different regions. If I could see in the pic some feature of the plant, maybe I could tell
I’m sad…it is the Allomerus carton indeed! ..so close the 10 points were! :/
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