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| While taking pictures of Messor pergandei near their nest, my wife noticed a M. pergandei that looked as though it had climbed up on a weed and was holding on to it. Having just read Parasite Rex, we both immediately thought of the fluke that "takes control" of ants at a certain stage and makes them climb to a prominent place. This makes it more likely that that the ant will get ingested by the fluke's next host. |
After watching the nest for a while, though, we saw an apparently dead
ant moving across the nest. It turned out that a small spider was dragging
the
 dead(?) ant
off of the midden. The ant was attached to the spider by the spinnerettes.
In the photos at the right, you can see a male spider next to the head of
the Messor pergandei. The
Extrafloral Nectary web site
had photos of a similar spider - Euryopis.
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After seeing the first spider and its victims, we began to notice more
evidence of their activities at other nests. The vegetation around some
nests looked like a scene out of Apocalypse Now, with
Messor pergandei corpses swaying in the
breeze.
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