Re: Vacanza in Thailandia
Inviato: 13/08/2016, 3:05
Hita Garcia, Wiesel and Fischer (2013) - The army ant genus Dorylus is mostly known for the spectacular swarm raids performed by some epigaeic species, mostly belonging to the subgenus Anomma, better known as "driver ants". These species perform huge swarm raids along the ground and lower vegetation with hundreds of thousands of blind, polymorphic workers to hunt down a great variety of prey taxa in large quantities, predominantly invertebrates (Gotwald, 1982, 1995). However, many more species within the genus live and hunt hypogaeicly and these army ants are generally less visible than their epigaeic relatives (Berghoff et al., 2002). Hypogaeic species hunt in columns and many species are known to be specialised predators of other social insects, such as termites or other ants (Darlington, 1985; Gotwald, 1982, 1995; Schöning & Moffett, 2007). Almost all species of Dorylus, like other army ant genera, live in monogynous colonies with dichthadiiform queens that have a massive egg-laying capacity, e.g. three to four million eggs per month in “driver ant” queens (Raignier & van Boven, 1955). In addition, Dorylus colonies migrate in irregular intervals to new nesting sites and new colonies emerge through colony fission (Gotwald, 1982, 1995).