Prolasius advenus
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| Prolasius advenus | ||||||||||||||
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| Prolasius advenus (Fr. Smith, 1862) |
Prolasius advenus is an ant of the family Formicidae, endemic to New Zealand, including offshore islands. It is found in native forests, nesting in soil under stones, or in or under rotting logs.
Prolasius advenus does not have a sting. Mandibles have six teeth. Length of the worker ant is about 2.9 to 3.5 mm. The antenna has 12 segments. Coloration is usually brown.
Colonies can have hundreds of workers, and be multi-queened and complex. Prolasius advenus is a generalist, foraging and scavenging for small arthropods and tending mealy bugs. Food exchange (trophallaxis) takes place between workers and larvae. The developing pupae are enclosed in pale cream coloured silken cocoons.
Several associations of this ant with beetles are known. Beetle species include the following: a staphylinid (Holotrochus sp.), a small endemic stag beetle, Ceratognathus passaliformis, and a pselaphid beetle, Ecomorypora granulata. There is also an interesting association with the caterpillars of the puriri moth, Aenetus virescens, that live in putaputaweta trees, Carpodetus serrata. The worker ants feed on sap exposed by the wound created in the callus tissue of the tree by the moth larvae.
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