![]() The ant lion, now about a half inch in size, pupates in a spherical, sand-covered cocoon for about a month in spring or summer. The larvae develops in stages called instars, digging many pits, some as large as two inches in diameter and depth. The ant lion then calmly takes out the trash, flicking the carcass out of its pit, and awaits its next victim. The predator drags its prey deeper into the sand, where it sucks out its body fluids. At some point in the struggle, the insect falls into the bottom of the trap or is impaled by the ant lion’s piercing mandibles. The ant lion further confuses the process by flicking particles of sand or dirt onto the frantic insect, aiding its descent into the pit. The steep sides make it hard to crawl out. An ant or a small insect steps inside the rim of the pit and begins the fight for life. Once complete, the pit becomes the ant lion’s home for up to three years.Ĭompletely buried now except for its long, piercing mandibles, or jaws, which stick out of the center of the pit, the ant lion larvae lies motionless at the bottom, waiting for its first victim. ![]() Continuing their backward, downward spiral, abdomen first, the cone-shaped pit is constructed. As they begin excavation, their oval-shaped abdomen plows through the soil, while their flat heads act like a shovel, flicking sand up and out of the pit. Their broad, flattened bodies have short, stubby legs, best for their habit of crawling backwards, which is also aided by the curve of the nearly invisible hairs on their body. The same color as the soil, they are well camouflaged. Once hatched, the larvae crawl about in search of a suitable home site, leaving tracks that look like doodles. Adult ant lions lay their eggs in dry, loose soil. Main source: Why Do Army Ants Commit Suicide? (treehugger.Found worldwide in arid and sandy habitats, ant lions belong to the order Neuroptera. Therefore, we have an information cascade where each ant will always make the decision to follow the previous ant’s signal. Because the behavior of army ants depends on the “governance” of self-organization as aforementioned, it is most likely that any ant will choose to follow the signal of a previous ant. This signal is the pheromone trail left by an ant, and the decision to be made by any ant receiving this signal is whether or not to follow the trail. We can look at this behavior as a generalization of the information cascade system in Chapter 16 where each ant does not have private information to guide its decision but must instead rely on the signal of an ant who has acted previously. The group will form a continuously rotating circle that often remains unbroken until the participating ants die of exhaustion. When a group of ants are separated from the main foraging party, they may lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another. When successful, this system allows foraging parties to lead larger groups back to food, but when unsuccessful, produces a deadly phenomenon– the ant mill. Each traveling ant leaves behind a pheromone trail that other ants may follow. This means that army ant colonies are constantly on the march for food, communicating their movement patterns through pheromone trails. Unlike most other ant species, army ants are blind and lack permanent nesting sites. The self-organization of army ant colonies produces particularly unique behaviors in army ants– the most bizarre and notable being the ant mill, or more colloquially, the “death spiral”.
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