KASPARI, M., POWELL, S., LATTKE, J., and O’DONNELL, S. The Black Caracara, a known predator of cacique nests, is sometimes mobbed and driven away by Yellow-rumped Caciques. It has been recently shown that the wasps in turn benefit the ants, helping to repel some of their predators, such as woodpeckers (Le Guen et al. 2011), they have learned to avoid the Azteca trees, which would take a protracted guerilla campaign to overcome. As army ants are all about blitzkrieg, and quickly stripping an area of profitable prey (Kaspari et al. Although army ants ( Eciton burchellii and Eciton hamatum) vastly outweigh the Azteca individually, the Azteca, by virtue of their overwhelming numbers, can keep army ant columns from advancing quickly up the tree (Servigne 2003). The wasps nest here because the Azteca repel one of the wasps’ worst enemies: army ants. They nest in trees that are occupied by Azteca ants, a type of dolichoderine ant that basically owns the tree, with large carton nests containing perhaps millions of moderately small workers and hundreds of queens. In turn, the wasps nest in these particular trees for a reason.
We also saw them with Polybia rejecta and Epipona spp. These are habitats that harbor a beautiful example of tropical symbiosis.Ī colony of Cacicus cela nesting in association with Polybia liliacea. Within these areas are a sparser forest, dominated by a few fast-growing tree species such as Cecropia and Triplaris (called “Long John” in Guiana).
The result is that the inside curve is an area that was formerly river-scoured, but now has abundant new soil. This is the process by which oxbow lakes are formed. These bends form spontaneously via the action of vortices along curves in the river, and on the inside of each curve there is high deposition of silt (on the outside is a high level of erosion). One of the particular habitats we saw a lot of was the meanders of the river, where the river loops and bends around long curves. Needless to say, this was a great natural history lesson in the making. When I was in French Guiana travelling trails on foot, I was lucky to encounter one example of a particular habitat in a day, but on the boat I could see the same type of habitat many times over. This is one you probably do not want to disturb!Ĭompared to my time in French Guiana, I found that travel by river offers a much greater volume of observations than walking in the forest. 3 Comments Symbiosis and inspiration in the jungleĪ large nest of Polybia liliacea. This entry was posted on April 24, 2015, in Natural History. Who knows what we will see! This will be a time for us to get out and get busy searching for whatever we can find. Catherine and I will be trying to get some shots of rubber boas as well.
We are going to look for a long list of interesting animals, from scorpions and rattlesnakes to a few special spiders ( Argiope, Antrodiaetus, Latrodectus [of course!)). Our transport will be a venerable old Honda Civic that Catherine picked up for 500 bucks! It has new brakes and everything so should be a safe and reliable steed to carry us eastwards. When I come back it will be all Guyana, all Okanagan, all the time!
IMAGE CLEANER AS GOOD AS HISTORY KILL SERIES
It also means I will have to interrupt my series on the Guyana trip. We will be mostly in the boonies, camping and searching for critters, so will be out of contact for a bit. So Catherine and I have a week off this coming week, so we are planning to go for a bit of a vacation in the Okanagan.
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