Killer ant

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (December 2007)

Name	Range	Comments
Velvet ant, family Mutillidae	USA, Canada	Velvet ants are popularly known as "cow killers", but this is a fanciful name; they cannot kill animals as large as cows. There are hundreds of species: two of the most well-known are Dasymutilla occidentalis in the eastern USA, and Dasymutilla magnifica, in the western USA. Note that velvet ants are not ants proper: that is, they are not members of the ant family Formicidae, but are actually wingless wasps in the family Mutillidae. [1]
Red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta	Americas, Southern China, Australia	Fire ants are aggressive and have a painful sting. A person typically encounters fire ants by inadvertently stepping into one of their mounds, which causes the ants to swarm up the person's legs, attacking en masse. The ants respond to pheromones that are released by the first ant to attack. The ants then swarm and immediately sting when any movement is sensed.
Argentine ant, Linepithema humile	Argentina, Southern Europe, Southern USA, California	Very small, attack mostly other ants. The main supercolony (Italy, Atlantic coast of Spain) is said to be the largest cooperating ant population in the World.
Pharaoh ant, Monomorium pharaonis	Worldwide
Red harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex barbatus	Western USA	Bright red myrmicine ants whose venom is the most potent of any ants species. Images
Bulldog ants, genus Myrmecia	Australia	They are said to be repelled by yellow objects. Belonging to the subfamily Myrmeciinae, these are among the most primitive extant ants. All but one of the sixty or so species are found in Australia.
Bullet ants, genus Paraponera	From Nicaragua southward to the Amazon Basin	Bullet ants, and their close relatives of the genus Dinoponera are New World ponerines.
Legionnaire ant genus Polyergus	range?	Legionnaire ants are most interesting southern boreal obligate dulotes of the Formicinae subfamily. Their host is, like a similar convergent species, Formica sanguinea, ants of the Formica fusca group. Although absent from the British Isles, Polyergus rufescens is present on the continent, and many observations of its behaviour were made by Auguste-Henri Forel. Like the unrelated British-found parasite to Tetramorium caespitum, Strongylodus testaceus (first discovered in Britain by Horace Donisthorpe), the legionnaire ants display greatly adapted, strongly falcate mandibles, which they use for piercing the heads of F. fusca et al. during raids.
Yellow crazy ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes	Christmas Island	They kill red crabs on Christmas Island, and generally destroy the ecosystem for the other 17 species of terrestrial crab found there, including the largest terrestrial invertebrate in the known world (the coconut crab).
Driver ants, genus Dorylus	The Old world, esp. West Africa and the Congo Basin	Unlike the army ants of the New World, Old World army ants have a functional sting, but rarely use it; this is more than compensated for by their razor-sharp, falcate mandibles. Dorylus spp. colonies also reach larger sizes than Eciton. The Siafu ants on Mount Meru in Tanzania were implicated in the death of a missing tourist to the Congo.