Ants Like it Sweet

Ants can bring "their" aphids to the best pastures available. They "milk" them by a stimulation with the antennas. Here some pictures with Aphis sambuci, an aphid feeding on elderberry (Sambucus nigra).

Left and right, one can see the honeydew bubble which was produced by the aphid and which the ant is about to swallow. If the aphid doesn't produce anything, it can happen that some ants kill the aphic and eat it. Honeydew producers, beware!!

Now, another kind of aphid (Aphis fabae ?) on St. John's Wort.

Yet another aphid (Aphis fabae ?) on Japanese Knotweed.

Two unidentified aphids...

It happens that the aphid resists to the ants...

and tries to escape. Here, an ant catched the aphid by the antenna and intends to bring it home.

Ants are also interested by other honeydew producting insects. Here, Trioza alacris, a Psyllid feeding on bay or laurel, which produces such cigars in young leaves.

Ants can also harvest honeydew from soft scales, like this Eulecanium sp., feeding on Japanese euonymus (Euonymus japonicus).

Ants can even drink the nectar produced by some flowers, here flowers of the Japanese euonymus (Euonymus japonicus).

Here, holly flowers.

Ants, here Lasius emarginatus, can even forage on the tender pulp of some plants, like here the Everlasting (Helichrysum italicum), when a stem was broken by the passage of an animal.

As soon as flowers arrive, they prefer bring their cattle back...

Those pictures showed us several aspects of the search for sweet matter by ants, through aphids and other honeydew producing kinds. They showed also that some ant species can forage directly on some plants, which is surely not as well known...