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Photo#727453
What a surprise! - Proceratium silaceum

What a surprise! - Proceratium silaceum
Basking Ridge, Somerset County, New Jersey, USA
December 1, 2012
I was digging for termites in the wood pile to use as subjects for a photo class project in school, and it was getting dark fast so I decided to throw a chunk of bark with termites into my bucket and look through it inside. Well it must have contained a small colony of ants, because throughout the night I found 3 workers and 1 queen in the bucket. I broke up the bark but found no other ants. Apparently these are specialized predators of spider eggs? I don't really see what the weird butt has to do with hunting spider eggs, unless they hook an egg sac to their abdomen then drag it back to the colony like a mother wolf spider...
Also, these ants (like many bugs I find in rotting logs) are very clumsy on my smooth, flat "on white" paper.
And they curl up into a ball when touched.
Worker 1/3

Images of this individual: tag all
What a surprise! - Proceratium silaceum What a surprise! - Proceratium silaceum What a surprise! - Proceratium silaceum What a surprise! - Proceratium silaceum What a surprise! - Proceratium silaceum What a surprise! - Myrmecina americana What a surprise!

Images of the M. americana qu
Images of the M. americana queen should be unlinked as they do not depict the same individual.

Moved
Moved from Proceratiinae.

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