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Pterostichus hunting for ants

Community and Forum → Insects biology and faunistics → Pterostichus hunting for ants

Tarxan, 11.03.2006 17:05

If anyone is interested, I can share my observation - how pterostichus (P. niger) hunted ants at night.

Comments

11.03.2006 21:15, Bad Den

Of course it's interesting!

11.03.2006 22:19, sealor

And what kind of ants? Are ants active at night?

13.03.2006 21:02, AGG

"Are ants active at night?"
still as active and not only they, I have a couple of hornets (V. crabro) with ecnr so much interesting dragged smile.gif

13.03.2006 22:23, sealor

It's not the first time I've heard this about hornets, but I never stop being surprised. I have observed German wasps more than once at night - they "sleep" at night, do not fly. They can't even bite properly at night if the nest is opened, although you shouldn't do this, since not only the wasps can't see anything, but also the one who wants to do this.
And here you are - hornets can freely navigate at night, the light of the screen does not confuse them... I don't know, we don't have any hornets, so I've never seen anything like this.

14.03.2006 11:52, Dmitry Vlasov

Hornets also "sleep" at night, or rather rest in the nest, but watchmen are awake and even at relatively low night temperatures - oh, how active. I had a long-standing case when I was a student walking at night (about two o'clock) with a group of girls ran into a tree with a hollow tree full of hornets. they tore out of there, as much as their heels sparkled, even forgot about the girls...

20.03.2006 9:25, Aleksandr Ermakov

If anyone is interested, I can share an observation of how pterostichus (P. niger) hunted ants at night.

You mean under the light trap screen?!
If so, then the observation is certainly interesting, but there is not such a thing to see... In my memory, even some large slug tried to pick up accidentally crushed freckles from the light trap station. Some creatures generally behave inappropriately-they bite everything and everything.
Camponotuses and formics start crunching under your feet when you approach the light trap screen. and this is in August in the Northern Urals, when the temperature is slightly above 5 degrees. As they say, you will want to eat.....
For me, much more valuable material can be obtained by observing objects in cages in conditions close to natural.
By the way, the cycle of work on the relationship of ants and ground beetles has long been conducted in Novosibirsk

20.03.2006 20:26, Tigran Oganesov


By the way, the cycle of work on the relationship of ants and ground beetles has long been conducted in Novosibirsk
They are working on the relationships between ants and all other insectswink.gif, for example, the last two dissertations were defended on the relationship between ants and legtails. No wonder, because Zh. I. Reznikova, the greatest expert on ants, works there.

21.03.2006 19:21, Tarxan

So, back to the pterostichae. It was like this. 2 o'clock in the morning. Recreation center in the Volga region. The porch is concrete. With a lantern by the door. ants run around the porch doing their own thing, back and forth. I don't know, I'm not a zoologist. But I can describe it - medium-sized, black, not red. In general-the usual ants in our places. Some pterostichus (I can determine the exact species, although I'm not a zoologist, but I can determine ground beetles) run out of a gap in the concrete, walk around for a while surrounded by ants, then grab the poor guy with their jaws and drag him to the original gap. somewhere in 15-20 minutes they run out again and the story repeats. ants do not resist at all, they are not afraid :-) and do not pay attention to pterostiches. It lasted for 2 hours. Then I couldn't stand it and went to bed.

21.03.2006 19:24, Tarxan

Addition. Each pterostichus caught one ant. And then I read my post again - and I thought that you might think that they were catching the same ant together. :-)

25.03.2006 17:13, Chromocenter

Interestingly, the ants didn't react at all.

25.03.2006 20:36, Tarxan

Absolutely nothing. They ran back and forth like ants usually run. Pterostiches did not grab the first comers, they somehow chose the victim. Ants and pterostiches collided, ran away, and walked around each other. But the ants did not run away, hide, or attack the pterostiches all together (and there were quite a lot of them, ants)

25.03.2006 22:53, Chromocenter

M-yes, maybe these same pterostiches secrete an enzyme that blocks some of their reactions in ants?

27.03.2006 15:30, Nilson

I'm not an expert on ants, but since such nocturnal attacks are unpredictable and rather random, ants are unlikely to have any evolutionarily developed defense mechanism against them, and, consequently, an alert system.

29.03.2006 13:45, Chromocenter

I wonder what they even did last night.

29.03.2006 15:14, Bad Den

Who, pterostiches or ants?
Pterostiches are active at night, in general.

29.03.2006 15:29, Chromocenter

No, I was talking about ants. I saw ants crawling under the streetlight at night. I've also heard about desert ants that they are active at night. They may have been "woken up" by the lantern, but since the time was not right, they were "strange".

29.03.2006 16:07, RippeR

These are zombie ants smile.gifthat are hypnotized by evil ground beetles and then lured out of hiding to eat smile.gifthem

30.03.2006 18:42, Tarxan

In general, ground beetles are interesting to keep at home. I kept pterostichus and carabus (C. cancellatus and P. lepidi) in a basin and it is very interesting to observe them.

30.03.2006 19:20, Chromocenter

Do they have canibalism?

30.03.2006 20:28, Bad Den

I don't think this was recorded. Although larvae with crowding probably can.

30.03.2006 20:49, RippeR

At the menu, the larva of the Congolese bronzer once devoured the pupa of a relative.. So..

31.03.2006 7:32, Dmitry Vlasov

I think that cannibalism and predation in insects are more widespread than is commonly believed.
a few examples:
1. repeatedly noticed during the maintenance of caterpillars of butterflies of different species that the scoop caterpillars ate the caterpillars of the blue-headed scoop (larger in size)
2. In 2005, I found a copper bronzer on the wilted inflorescence of the garden bodyak, which with great pleasure ate the larva of a weevil from the genus Larinus.
And in artificial conditions, with a lack of food, crowding, such facts can be collected in dozens.

01.04.2006 8:19, Tarxan

My ground beetles did not have cannibalism, if only because they lived alone. In general, they eat interestingly. For example, they love ground beef without onions.

25.01.2007 17:08, Dinusik

Cannibalism among ground beetles is quite possible. Sometimes, when ethyl acetate is eroded in the stain, and there are large Carabus caught alive together with other smaller ground beetle species, 100% Carabus eats some of them. I have had such cases repeatedly. Sometimes, not completely starved Carabuses and Pterostiches come to life already on mattresses and cause damage to the rest of the material.

26.01.2007 13:23, Brandashmyg

In captivity, insects noticeably change their food preferences. So, normally herbivorous animals can consume animal food to meet their water needs, if there is a lack of it in the cage. For example, normally the herbivorous Pseudophyllus titan ate a gecko in a cage!

26.01.2007 17:07, Necrocephalus

In captivity, insects noticeably change their food preferences. So, normally herbivorous animals can consume animal food to meet their water needs, if there is a lack of it in the cage. For example, normally the herbivorous Pseudophyllus titan ate a gecko in a cage!

In captivity, I ate fruit with great pleasure: juicy pears, etc., and after that I felt quite good, despite the fact that I was a predator.

Once there was a case when two mottled Trichodes simply tore to pieces my entire daily catch (small flower barbels, pollen eaters, etc.), and even gnawed each other's legs. It turned out that acetone (which is even more volatile than ethyl acetate) was eroded in the stain due to a loosely covered lid.

26.01.2007 17:10, omar

Motley birds of this kind are generally not averse to eating meat. I constantly see them attacking and devouring their flower neighbors.

28.01.2007 2:15, Necrocephalus

Motley birds of this kind are generally not averse to eating meat. I constantly see them attacking and devouring their flower neighbors.

Yes, and even motley birds are not averse to snacking on the fingers of entomologists - especially Thanasimus, despite its small size. They have such a bulldog grip on the skin, if you take them carelessly, that if you pull carelessly, you can tear off the beetle's breast or head - and the jaws will still remain clenched...

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