Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders: Notes and Observations on Their Habits and Dwellings — John Shaqi
Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders: Notes and Observations on Their Habits and DwellingsMoggridge, John Traherne
Science
Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders: Notes and Observations on Their Habits and Dwellings
Moggridge, John Traherne
Ants; Trap-door spiders
It was easy enough to find the nest to which these ants belonged, for
it was only necessary to follow the line of ants burdened with seeds,
grain, or entire capsules, which had their heads turned homewards,
and there, sure enough, at about ten yards distance, and partly
shaded by some small _Cistus_ bushes, lay the nest, to and from the
entrances of which the incessant stream of incomers and outgoers kept
flowing.
The proceedings of the ants were the same as those previously
observed in the late spring (April and May), the workers usually
seeking their harvest at some distance from the nest, and going in
search of it as far as the cultivated ground, where the crops of
weeds were more abundant and more varied.
In a few cases, however, where the terraces were too far distant,
they contented themselves with plundering the grasses, pea-flowers,
honeywort, and the other denizens of the garrigue. In one case I was
able to follow the thread-like column of workers from the nest to the
weedy terrace where the plants grew from which they were gathering
the seeds, and found that the nearly continuous double line measured
twenty-four yards. Even this gives but an inadequate idea of the
number of ants actively employed in the service of this colony, for
hundreds of them were dispersed among the weeds on the terrace, and
many were also employed in sorting the materials and in attending to
the internal economy of the nest. Still this affords some evidence
of the systematic and extensive scale on which foraging is carried on
by this ant, and of the high importance which these creatures attach
to their provision of grain.
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