Shots one and two are of the ant aphid colonies on our nearly-gone dahlias. Shot 3 is some larva (any id help appreciated) that I presume is leaving the trail of aphid carnage you see in the shot. What I don't understand is why the aphids are crawling all over the larva as if this were a good idea. Any thoughts?
-Amy
Lovely series Amy, when aphids are disturbed from their feeding they often wander aimlessly around for a while before settling back down to feeding in a group, they possibly just don't realise that they are crawling onto the hover fly larva.
Lovely series Amy- aphid colonies are wonderful little ecosystems
As Adrian says the larva is a hover fly happily munching the aphids. If you watch hovers laying eggs some species search out the aphid colonies and lay one or two eggs near each one.
AFAIK when an aphid is attcked it releases alarm pheromones from those twin exhaust pipes which makes the other aphids stop their feeding/withdraw their stylus and start moving.
LordV wrote:
Lovely series Amy- aphid colonies are wonderful little ecosystems
As Adrian says the larva is a hover fly happily munching the aphids. If you watch hovers laying eggs some species search out the aphid colonies and lay one or two eggs near each one.
AFAIK when an aphid is attcked it releases alarm pheromones from those twin exhaust pipes which makes the other aphids stop their feeding/withdraw their stylus and start moving.
Did the ants take any interest in this ?
Brian V.
The ants were nowhere to be foud on the stem anymore, so I don't now whether they gave up or were busy moving as many as they could -I have sen ants moving their aphid colony before, but a search around this dessimated colony didn't reveal any hero ants. If there were phermones being released, the other aphids will not be long for the natural selection process, as they didn't seem to be receiving the signal
