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Everyone knows that insect families are rich in "pretenders", such as: stick insects like branches, dead leaf butterflies like leaves, grasshoppers like grass leaves, orchid praying mantises like petals... These "disguises" are all imitations of plants, interesting but commonplace, but you don't know what you don't know: there are some guys who prefer to imitate ants, and the imitation is magical.
How much like?
Probably so! Can make you dumbfounded in minutes:
Select ants from the image below (multiple choices)
There are 3 pictures belonging to ants, and these 3 pictures are...
Revealed at the end of the article
(Because I have read the editor's article, I will naturally know the answer)
1
Why imitate ants
In everyone's impression, ants seem to be the most easily bullied animals, but in the animal world, ants are not so easy to mess with, they are the most successful social group in the world, and the strong group defense system makes any guy who tries to hurt ants prohibitive, so imitating ants has become a "fashion".
In addition to pursuing fashion, animal imitation ants can be boiled down to 2 points – defense and predation
Defense: Ants have a tight social organization, a large number, strong attack power, and bad taste for birds and beasts. As a result, many insects and spiders, such as simulated ants, sit back and avoid becoming obvious targets for predators.
Predators: The main types that imitate ants for predation are spiders (and many spiders are defensive mimetic ants) and some predatory bugs: they look like ants, behave like ants, thus deceiving ants, approaching nests, and hunting ants.
An ant-like jumping spider preys on ants
2
Is it common to imitate ants?
The mimetic biological phenomenon that other animals like this simulate through their morphology and behavior, using ants as simulated objects, is called myrmecomorphy or ant-mimicry. Since it can be called a phenomenon, it is very common: the phenomenon of anthropomorphism has been independently produced at least 70 times in the animal kingdom, including 15 times in spiders, 10 times in blind bugs, and 7 times in cryptoptera.
3
What are the organisms of the ants
According to statistics, there are more than 2,000 species of organisms in 200 genera and more than 54 families. Categories:
Araneae
Some of the jumping spiders of the arachnid order are experts in anthropomorphism, of which antmimicking spiders of the genus Myrmarachne are representative.
(Top: Ant Spider Bottom: Ant)
In order to imitate the ant, the ant spider also took pains to carry out a major transformation from the outside to the inside. They "evolved" to have shrunken abdomens, mimicking the nodules of ants; they could also gracefully lift their first pair of feet high and sway majestically to imitate the ant's tentacles. As for how much they can look like, take a look at the diagram:
Some species, such as the black-footed ant spider Myrmarachne melanotarsa, can inhabit and mingle in ant nests, imitate ants, imitate ants' carcasses, and even imitate the social activities of ants, prey on other spiders and seek refuge in the nests to avoid other predators (spiders), in short, by imitating ants and enjoying free security of ants.
Myrmarachne melanotarsa
Hymenoptera
Hymenoptera antelope (ant bee is a collective name for solitary insects of the hymenoptera antbee family) is also a master of ant-likeness, their appearance is very similar to ants, and their English name velvet ant literally translates to "velvet ant".
The female ant bee looks like a large ant covered with dense fluff, and the villi are different colors, including yellow, orange, red, white, black and other colors, which are very gorgeous, and the most famous and pleasing of them is the panda ant. Although the panda ant looks cute, it has the title of "cow killer" - "cow killer". They are hermaphroditic, females are wingless, and males are winged. Not only that, but female bees are more active during the day in order to better imitate ants, while males generally move at night.
Orthoptera
Orthoptera insects imitate ants mainly in the larval stage, and it is really difficult for them to survive alone in the dangerous world at the larval stage, without a hard shell, without extremely fast escape speed, without wings can not fly, what to do?
A class of ants living in Southeast Asia (Macroxiphus sp. They came up with a great way to survive — simulating ants. Most of them are dark brown or black, about 10 mm long, and look like a large black ant from a distance, but if you look closely, you will find its slender tentacles and strong and powerful hind legs.
In order to be more like an ant, they are mostly active on the ground during the day and will imitate the unstable swinging gait of the ant. However, these are all expedient measures when they are young, and when they grow up, they will become another bright and bright appearance.
Hemiptera
There are many types of hemiptera bugs that can mimic ants, including: arachnid bugs, blind bugs, bug hunting and so on.
Arachnid bug
Myrmecoris gracilis
They resemble ants in appearance, but the obvious sucking mouthparts easily reveal their identity. And interestingly, among the bugs that imitate ants, some species are imitated by female insects, for example: Myrmecoris gracilis; some species are imitated by male insects, for example: Formiscurra indicus.
Formiscurra indicus
Coleoptera
The shape of the coleoptera ant carapace is also very similar to that of ants, which can be easily confused if not carefully identified. Ant-beetles are a collective term for the ant-shaped beetle family, and their approximate image is known from its English name ant-like beetles.
The body of the ant is as small as an ant, about 1.6 to 15 mm, their body is relatively soft, the head is curved, and the compound eye shrinks sharply and becomes thinner into the neck, which is not consistent with the image of common Coleoptera insects. They crawl fast, are not good at flying, prefer to stay in damp places and have a varied diet. However, the elytra covering the dorsal plate of the abdomen can still expose its beetle identity droplets.
Anthelephila cyanea
In addition, some mantis nymphs, as well as dipterans, bulbophyllaceae, etc., have also imitated ants and followed the "fashion".
Asian ant mantis Odontomantis planiceps
Of course, the shape of the ant is a good method, but there are also insects that have taken a different path and taken another imitation measure, goniurellia tridens fruit flies are pioneers, they "print" pictures of ants on their wings, as if a pair of ants have been born on the wings. When they flap their wings back and forth, they seem to be surrounded by ants, and the effect displayed at this time will confuse the predator, dare not move easily, and not be tired?
Goniurellia tridens
Finally reveal the answer
Top left: Weaver Ant; Top right: Ant Cricket nymph;
Center left: Jumping Spider; center right: Trap jaw ant Trap-Jaw Ant;
Bottom left: Bug Alydid Bug; bottom right: Carpenter Ant
Image source: Google Pinterest
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