One of the largest ants in the Amazon basin:
photo details:
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 7D
ISO 200, f/16, 1/250 sec, diffuse overhead flash
Dolichoderus rugosus
photo details:
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 7D
ISO 200, f/16, 1/250 sec, diffuse overhead flash
Large and in charge. She has some scary-looking hairs and appendages there.
Did you hand hold the flash overhead? That’s a really nice lighting effect, but I can’t imagine doing it one-handed.
That’s exactly what I was doing. Holding the camera in my right hand and the flash in my left. It’s cumbersome, but workable. Sometimes Mrs. Myrmecos holds the flash for me, but in this instance she was on the wrong continent.
1) Cool – it looks like a Camponotus sereceiventris mimic.
2) Are these aggressive ants?
1) I thought it was a Camponotus too, until I looked at the photo enlarged in the LCD.
2) Not at all. The challenge was approaching close without spooking them.
stunning ant
Longest might be a better descriptor. Others (in Camponotus, e.g.) nearly or indeed as long are rather more bulky. And there are the notably larger Dinoponera, Paraponera, Pachycondyla commutata, etc.
Still, one of the big ones, to be sure — And, an elegant image of an elegant ant. It is one that like most of its congeners, is virtually unknown biologically. I find the members of this genus, including those (much smaller ones) that occur here in Missouri and Illinois, really mysterious.
I think you’re being pedANTic, James. 🙂
Indeed, I study ants as a wholesome expresssion of my pedANTry.
So just how big is it? Is that 1:1 on a 1.6 crop sensor, if so that’s a huge ant! (For someone with no experience of tropical ants anyway!)
Yup- that’s 1:1. It’s a giraffe of an ant.
Nice photo! And talking about dolichoderines, I think it would be interesting if you could publish some advice to discriminate dolichoderines and formicines in the field, and the main genera within them. I usually find it relatively easy to identify myrmicine, ponerines and other clades but when I come across one of these I am never certain of the genera and, in ocassions, not even its subfamily!
Most dolichoderines have a distinctive odor. Have you tried squishing a worker and smelling it?