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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?
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

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

 
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

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

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

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

 
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

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