Pests have always been a part of human life. For hundreds of years, these plants and animals have caused trouble in our homes, damaged our crops, and harmed our livestock. Pests, however, are not unique to humans; ants, also, deal with their own kind of pests — the thief ants.
“It’s just staggering,” says Andrea Lucky, an ant systematist at the University of Florida, who was not involved with the work, but who now advises the author of the paper. “Thief ants are formidable predators.”
These thief ants tunnel upon the nests of larger ants up to 24 times their size, and prey upon the young of these larger ants.
They spray a powerful venom to keep the adults at bay.
When they are removed from the picture, the species of ants that they prey upon thrive and almost double in numbers.
More details about this study over at Science Magazine.
(Image Credit: April Nobile/ AntWeb.org/ CC BY-SA 3.0/ Wikimedia Commons)