Oecophylla smaragdina
Oecophylla smaragdina | |
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Workers of Oecophylla smaragdina | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Arthropoda |
Class: | Insecta |
Order: | Hymenoptera |
Family: | Formicidae |
Subfamily: | Formicinae |
Genus: | Oecophylla |
Species: | O. smaragdina |
Binomial name | |
Oecophylla smaragdina Fabricius, 1775[1] | |
Oecophylla range map. Oecophylla longinoda in blue, Oecophylla smaragdina in red.[1] |
Oecophylla smaragdina (common names include weaver ant, green ant, green tree ant, and orange gaster) is a species of arboreal ant found in Asia and Australia. They make nests in trees made of leaves stitched together using the silk produced by their larvae.
Weaver ants may be red or green. In Malaysia, they are labelled as kerengga (In Malay, semut api are fire ants, which belong to a different genus, Solenopsis).
The larvae and pupae are collected and processed into bird food, fish bait and in the production of traditional medicines in Thailand[2] and Indonesia.[3]
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A Queen of Oecophylla smaragdina that has shed its wings
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Weaver ant nest on a Mango tree
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Nest in Kinnerasani Wildlife Sanctuary, Andhra Pradesh, India.
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Weaver ants feeding on a dead African giant snail
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Two weaver ants transferring food
References
- 1 2 Dlussky, Gennady M.; Torsten Wappler; Sonja Wedmann (2008). "New middle Eocene formicid species from Germany and the evolution of weaver ants" (PDF). Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 53 (4): 615–626. doi:10.4202/app.2008.0406.
- ↑ "The importance of weaver ant (Oecophylla smaragdina Fabricius) harvest to a local community in Northeastern Thailand" (PDF). Asian Myrmecology 2: 129–138. 2008.
- ↑ Césard N. (2004). "Le kroto (Oecophylla smaragdina) dans la région de Malingping, Java-Ouest, Indonésie : collecte et commercialisation d’une ressource animale non négligeable." (PDF). Anthropozoologica (in French) 39 (2): 15–31.
External links
- Media related to Oecophylla smaragdina at Wikimedia Commons