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While down at Jacksons Creek in Sunbury today (2/3/22) i observed Meat Ants (Iridomyrmex purpureus) up a tree taking honey dew from a Leafhopper species , I've never seen Meat Ants do this before but Bert assures me it's nothing new , still cool to see .
Went back to the Meat Ants today (13/3/22) and took a few more pics , the nest is about a good 10m from the tree and it is the only one with the Leafhoppers on it , as you can see it is a good size nest ( about 6m long and about 1.5m at its widest )
Just took a few more pics tonight at 7.45 pm (24/3/22) , the ants are still in attendance even with darkness only 15 mins away .
Sunbury Meat Ants / Leafhoppers (photos 1- 14)
As you can see from my previous post (24/3/22) i mentioned that the ants were still up the tree with darkness looming and i was wondering if they stayed in the tree all night with the leaf hoppers . I answered my own question this morning (27/3/22) at the Melton Weir at Exford . I was there not long after sun up and as you can see the ants had a sleep over up the tree , the very heavy dew was all over them as well as the leaves . The leaf hoppers were generally under the branches and leaves while the ants sat on top of the branches . I've included some pics of some of the juveniles (photos 15 - 20)
Found a lot of Two-lined Gum Treehoppers (Eurymeloides bicinta) on a small Gum Sapling down Emu Bottom with their Meat Ant protectors , as you can see there are a lot of Ants milking the Hoppers but they are very well protected in return ( it's a perfect symbiotic relationship) they were right onto me as soon as i started taking photos (30/12/22) photos 21 - 24 .
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Last edit: 08 Jan 2023 07:57 by Trevor Glyn-Jones.
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