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Home » Guide » Arthropods (Arthropoda) » Hexapods (Hexapoda) » Insects (Insecta) » Ants, Bees, Wasps and Sawflies (Hymenoptera) » Aculeata - Ants, Bees and Stinging Wasps » Ants (Formicoidea) » Ants (Formicidae) » Formicinae » Formicini » Wood ants, mound ants, & field ants (Formica) » fusca group (Formica fusca group) » Formica subsericea
Photo#314043
Ant farm - Formica subsericea
Copyright © 2009 Rob Broekhuis

Ant farm - Formica subsericea
Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, USA
August 2, 2009
Ants tending to growths on a prunus. I thought they were aphids, but I don't see any legs or other appendages. What am I looking at?
tag · login or register to post comments
Contributed by Rob Broekhuis on 2 August, 2009 - 4:51pm
Last updated 30 December, 2010 - 3:46pm

Moved
Moved from Ants.
… James C. Trager, 30 December, 2010 - 3:46pm login or register to post comments

Moved
Moved from Plant-parasitic Hemipterans.
Neat--I'd heard of extrafloral nectaries on tropical plants, but didn't realize that there were conspicuous ones on North American Prunus spp.
… Charley Eiseman, 22 December, 2010 - 3:35pm login or register to post comments

 
Extra-floral nectaries occur
Extra-floral nectaries occur on a wide variety of our native plants, especially, but by no means exclusively, in legumes, Rosaceae, Bignoniaceae, Passiflora, and composites. Petiolar nectaries of many legumes are often quite conspicuous.
… James C. Trager, 30 December, 2010 - 3:45pm login or register to post comments

nectaries
These are not insects -- they are extrafloral nectaries, which produce fluids like nectar that ants like. The story goes that these attract ants which protect the plant from herbivores....
… Andrew Jensen, 22 December, 2010 - 2:23pm login or register to post comments

Moved
Moved from ID Request. There are no known galls resembling this on Prunus, so these must be scale insects or something along those lines...
… Charley Eiseman, 12 September, 2009 - 1:28am login or register to post comments

Not sure -
ants can also tend scale insects (one possibility here) and galls. I'm guessing these are some sort of soft scale insect, but I really don't know. Let's hope we get a comment from one of our experts... Nice image! It might help if you know the species of Prunus?
… Ken Schneider, 1 September, 2009 - 3:03pm login or register to post comments

 
Prunus
They are the suckering rootstock of a weeping Japanese cherry. I know what the top of the tree is called, but not the lowly bottom!
… Rob Broekhuis, 1 September, 2009 - 4:37pm login or register to post comments

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