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Oregon mystery ants


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#1 Offline Salmon - Posted July 17 2017 - 7:49 PM

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About a week and a half ago I was on a trip to Oregon and I saw several colonies of these myrmicines in a high elevation area near Crater Lake.

Here's a few somewhat bad pictures of the workers, which are fairly large at around 5-8 mm long. They sort of look like something that should be able to sting, but I couldn't induce them to do so. They enthusiastically ate dead mosquitoes.





At first I thought they might be some sort of Myrmica, but then I found a queen of what I believe to be the same species crawling around on the ground (around 15 mm) and that clearly wasn't what it was. What really stood out was the long, thin pedicle and the strange shape of the abdomen.



I also saw some other cool critters on that trip, including Pogonomyrmex, huge colonies of mound- building Formica and giant dampwood termites... maybe for another post.
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#2 Offline gcsnelling - Posted July 18 2017 - 2:06 AM

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Manica bradleyi
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#3 Offline VoidElecent - Posted July 18 2017 - 5:19 AM

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Wow, wonderful find and beautiful pictures. Manica bradleyi is probably my favorite species of the West; I can't believe you caught a queen.

 

These ants do sting and according to multiple sources, and it's quite painful, however they're primarily aggressive to other ant colonies and rarely sting humans.


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#4 Offline RenDragon - Posted July 18 2017 - 10:36 AM

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Be careful not to transport the Queen ant across a state line though...



#5 Offline Salmon - Posted July 18 2017 - 11:50 AM

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Be careful not to transport the Queen ant across a state line though...


This was weeks ago. The queen was released immediately after being photographed.
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#6 Offline ace2184 - Posted July 18 2017 - 12:52 PM

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Very interesting. I grew up in Washington and have a spent a decent amount of time in Oregon and have never run across these particular ants. Good pictures. 






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