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Project Noah Nature School
Atta mexicana
Mostly smaller workers, at 8-10mm body length. On these pictures, they can be seen cleaning out their fungus gardens on to a rubbish dump (pictures #5+#6). The cleaning seems to include dead (?) larvae. The rubbish heap covers an area of about 50cm x 30cm.
City park in semi-arid region, at about 1800m a.s.l.
Here's video of this colony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzWVvSXg...
Spotted on May 1, 2020
Submitted on May 5, 2020
2 Comments
Sorry, only just saw your comment! Apparently most species make underground dumps, so one never sees them. I go out there as often as I can to watch the mound grow.
Interesting Felix. We have tons of leaf-cutter ants here (literally), but I've never seen this before. Thanks for sharing.