Ant Enemies Outside The Nest

Like all living creatures, ants have a wide variety of enemies, ranging from tiny creatures to birds and mammals. The greatest threat to ants, however, are ants themselves (see chapter "Attack and defence").

Among the small creatures, ants have hardly any enemies due to their defensibility. Apart from the ant lion (Myrmeleon formicarius), specialised but quantitatively insignificant enemies are found in some spiders (Achaearanea riparia Dipoena tristis, Zodarion spp.) and digger wasps (Tracheliodes spp.). Ants are confronted with parasites (fungi, nematodes, mites, parasitic flies and wasps) in different ways, the transition to the "sub-tenants" is fluid.

Although ants are on the menu of lizards, amphibians and small mammals, they enjoy a certain protection due to their disproportionate taste/nutritional value. More important here are birds, which catch the nutritious sexual animals that swarm to the nuptial flight. At the nest itself, green woodpeckers, grey woodpeckers and wrynecks feed almost entirely on ants (up to 1,000/day). Forest ants, which are also on the menu of growing grouse, are particularly affected. In the case of capercaillie, the forest ant diet is even said to be indispensable for the normal development of the young.

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Direct stalking is less problematic for forest ants than the impairment of nest architecture, which allows frost and water to penetrate and severely disrupt the thermal balance. In winter, woodpeckers dig deep, arm-thick tunnels in the nest dome in search of ants. Badgers, foxes and especially wild boar rummage through the piles in search of grubs of the rose chafer (Potosi cuprea). These impairments by natural beneficiaries, which forest ants or their fellow inhabitants need as a basis for feeding, are tolerated by healthy forest ant colonies in most cases and should in no case lead to the exclusion of forest ant nests with protective netting from their natural network of relationships. More serious in this respect are human interventions, as these also belong to the group of nest destroyers - whether wilfully or through carelessness during forest work. neglect of the brood - whether through deprivation of nourishment or brood robbery by the subtenants - leads to severe impairments of the ant colony.
Ant guests come from various animal groups: Pseudoscorpions often act as exterminators in animal nests. Mites of the genus Antennophorus "ride" on the ants and beg for food with their long front legs. Woodlice (Platyarthrus hoffmannseggi), silver ants (Atelura formicaria) and ant crickets (Myrmecophilus acervorum, are frequent guests in ant nests, where they live on waste or feed on the feeding ants.

or food by the feeding ants. The flower bug Xylocoris formicetorum sucks on forest ant corpses. The larvae of the hoverfly Microdon, formerly misunderstood as nudibranchs, eat the larvae or root aphids in the ants' nests. The tiny shining guest tit lives exclusively in nests of forest ants, where it nibbles at the mutual feeding of the host animals. The larvae of the metallic rose beetle Potosia cuprea live on rotting nest material of forest ants. Mammals, e.g. wild pigs, rummage through the piles in search of these grubs. The glossy beetle Amphotis marginata lies in wait for returning workers of Lasius fuligi- nosus and stimulates them to feed. Detected too late as a beggar, it is protected from attack by its dorsal shield. The blind mace beetle Claviger testaceus lives with the yellow meadow ant and secretes "tasty" secretes.

"tasty" secretions. In return, it is cared for and fed like the ant brood. The egg of an ant leaf beetle has a cone-shaped shell. Entered as nesting material, the larva hatches, surrounds itself with a solid moss shell and feeds on the ant brood. Dinarda dentata, a short-winged beetle, intervenes in feeding among forest ants. It also eats mites away from its hosts and is therefore useful. The short-winged beetle Atemeles pubicol- lis lives in the winter half-year among Myrmica species, which bring it in because of its glandular excretions. There it lives on theft and brood robbery. In the summer half-year, it switches to forest ants, where it lays larvae, which are
larvae, which are fed by the hosts like their own brood. The caterpillar of the ant blue Maculinea nauseous secretes secretions that are "tasty" for the red knotted ant and is eventually carried in. In the nest, however, the caterpillar is a dangerous nest predator.