The place: Somewhere in the Mojave Desert… The mission: to seek out new life and new civilizations.. to boldly go where few myrmecologists have gone before. Ok a short intermissision, in addition to herps I am also heavy into entomology, esp. ants and am working on a revision of the new world army ants, hence the heavy emphasis on ants in the post. now back to the story.
Ok so I got bored and decide to take a trek on Sunday. My first stop was a location somewhere in the vicinity of Adelanto. My father and I have collected in this site with great success, it has the distinction of being the only “pinpointed” location where Neivamyrmex mojave, a species of army ant has been collected, the type locality just states “Mojave desert”. Actually there is now one other record from Southern Baja.
With all the rain the area is looking pretty good, nice, green and many flowers
<img src=http://www.krungkuene.org/imgant/pic/adelanto.jpg>
A small species of native poppy
<img src=http://www.krungkuene.org/imgant/pic/poppies.jpg>
Another little pretty
<img src=http://krungkuene.org/imgant/pic/pinkflower.jpg>
. However after a couple of hours wandering around and flipping rocks it was apparent that it was a little early in the season for much to happening, few ants were visibly active mostly Pogonomyrmex californicus
<img src=http://krungkuene.org/imgant/pic/colony1.jpg>
Found this little gal making a beeline for her nest, she was moving fast and stopping for nothing. Her load looked suspicious so I tried to get her to drop it, no way, no how was she going to let go so I collected her to id the prize.
<img src=http://krungkuene.org/imgant/pic/pogofood1.jpg>
It turns out that this is what she was carrying, although not this particular one. Talk about the irony of the situation. Her item was fresh and I have no doubt that she collected it herself rather than finding it dead.
http://krungkuene.org/imgant/pic/antlion3.jpg>
<img src=http://krungkuene.org/imgant/pic/antlion2.jpg>
Threaded Mode
