Allomerus Decemarticulatus

Allomerus decemarticulatus is an Amazonian ant species found in the tropics of South America. They were documented by Alain Dejean et al. (2001) in French Guiana, a small French territory on the coast of northeast South America just north of Brazil. This species is most notable for the workers’ complex and extreme predatory behavior which involves a symbiosis with both a plant and fungal species. They live in leaf pockets of a host plant species, Hirtella physophora, which is also native to the Amazon. These leaf pockets are areas inside of the plant between the leaves and the stem. Each colony will inhabit a tree, with about 1200 individual workers per tree and 40 workers per leaf. Their diet primarily consists of large insects that are captured on the plant, but the ants also eat parts of the plant such as nectar and some kinds of food bodies produced by the plant. They are able to capture their prey, which are much larger than themselves, by constructing a platform that acts as a trap for the unsuspecting prey. The ants hide in the trap and attack when any insect lands on it. This technique is an example of ambush predation.

Read more about Allomerus Decemarticulatus:  Physical Characteristics, Habitat, Plant Mutualism, Fungal Symbiosis, Trap-making, Predatory Behavior, Other Animal Interactions, Relevance To Sociobiology