Formica aquilonia

Schwachbeborstete mountain wood ant (Formica Aquilonia )

The Schwachbeborstete mountain wood ant (Formica Aquilonia ) belongs to the genus of wood ants (Formica ) in the subfamily of ants scales ( Formicinae ).

Features

The gaster and the top of the head are black. Cheeks and head shield and the legs are black brown, whereas the rest of the body has a predominantly red color. The occiput bears on the corners clearly upcoming hair and the head base is occupied with individual spreading hairs. The largely bald Mesosoma shows only in isolation hair. The two black spots on the pronotum and mesonotum appear clearly different in size and indistinctly delimited. The workers are 4 to 8.5 millimeters long. The Stielchenglied ( petiole ) is staffed with shorter hair than in the Starkbeborsteten mountain forest ant ( Formica lugubris ), or in the Swiss Mountain wood ant (Formica paralugubris ) with which this species is very easy to confuse.

Distribution and habitat

The distribution area extends across the boreal zone from Scotland to Siberia. In Europe, the Schwachbeborstete mountain forest ant comes south in the mountains before, as in the Bohemian Forest, Blansky forest, Novohradské mountains, the Carpathians and the Eastern Alps to 2,400 meters above sea level. They settled predominantly montane ( spruce ) and beech mixed forests and subalpine fir forest types, but penetrates to the tree line less in the krummholz belt in front, as the other mountain ant Formica lugubris.

Way of life

This ant species is highly polygynous countries, which often include many nests. It shows little aggression towards foreign colony representatives of the same kind, the reproductives swarm from late May to late July. Copulation takes place in or on the nest, and external pairing courses are served. The young queens are adopted from the mother nest or other conspecific nests. Monogyne colonies are not yet known, as well as start-ups are not detected in slave ants, whereby, however, assumes that both exist. The hills are much smaller than in the Kahlrückigen wood ant (Formica polyctena ). The largest known nests in Finland are 210 centimeters tall and have an area of ​​280 centimeters.