History and Origins of weaver ants as Insect Plant Pest Control

Side-Green.Com - History and Origins of weaver ants as Insect Plant Pest Control - Almost everyone has seen the weaver ant has a red body color. Weaver ants have been known throughout the world which has the scientific name Oecophylla smaragdina. Weaver ants have a very aggressive nature. Keagresifanya used to control crop pests.

In addition to the above benefits, weaver ants can also be a source of income that is promising. In nature, weaver ants build their nests on the young leaves. The number of members of weaver ant colonies can reach hundreds or even thousands. Weaver ant colony has a specific territory and notoriously aggressive in defending territory.

Weaver ants are very unique and different from other types of ants. Humans have used their services in the plantations centuries ago. Noted, around the year 300 AD in Canton (China), weaver ants used to repel pests in citrus. The citrus farmers there took the weaver ant nests of the forest, memperjualbelikannya, then put it on the orange trees of superior types. The same technique is still being done until the 12th century, and is still applied in the south of China to date.

Another example of the use of weaver ants in controlling plant pests is on the coffee plantations in Lampung, we can find a colony of these ants nest in leaves of coffee. Apparently, the coffee plant that occupied this nest being better than plants that are not occupied by weaver ants.

An entomologist Ghana have used the type of African weaver ants (Oecophylla longinoda) to control crop pests chocolate. The presence of weaver ants were able to reduce two kinds of serious diseases caused by viruses and fungi, that is by attacking and killing aphids that become spreaders of this disease. Aphids are very harmful, as well as consuming suck plant fluids network. How to control pests such as we know today as "biological control" and this is an example of the oldest in the history of agriculture.

Weaver ants have strong behavior, that is brave. Known weaver ants dare attack other organisms that interfere despite his size 100 times larger than they are. As biocontrol was already done also by some of Indonesia's population, though not massive. For example, if a guava or mango tree in the yard of pests, they will move the nest of weaver ants into the tree.

There are many benefits that we can take from the weaver ant. Its very sensitive to changes in the weather, has been used by humans as an indicator of the state of the air in an environment. Weaver ants liked the clean air environment.

Weaver ants do not like the presence of smoke, such as factory smoke, car fumes, and smoke of burning trash. Therefore in large cities increasingly difficult to find a weaver ant nests in the trees.

Know the useful life of an insect is indeed quite impressive. This social insect nest in the canopy of tropical forests to farms and chocolate. Weaver ants form colonies whose members could reach 500,000 tails, consisting of a very large queen, children, workers and soldiers concurrently. Everything females, except for a few male ants are tiny role in the life of the colony. The male ants leave immediately if an adult to enter into marriage with a fly looking for marry queen weaver ants, and they did not return to the nest.

Among the members of the colony, which is the most active group of workers. They diligently foraging, nest building, and persistent protective of their territory day and night. Almost every minute, one of the workers regurgitate liquid food into the mouth of the queen. They feed the queen with food that has been softened so as to allow the queen produces hundreds of eggs per day.

If the queen had been laying, workers will move the eggs to a protected location, clean, and feed the larvae have hatched fine if.

Weaver ants also known as weaver smile, because of the way they make nests like those made of webbing. Their nests are made of some leaves that dilekukkan and linked together to form complex spaces and resembles a tent. The leaves, they pull in one direction, and then connected with fine threads drawn from their own larvae.

The workers move back and forth from one leaf to another leaf to form webbing. Foreign animal trying to infiltrate the nest area, they will expel the sting out of the formic acid that their venom glands. If other types of ants deliberately allowed even maintain aphids living in their territory, the weaver ants just the opposite. They are trying desperately to get rid of other insects that live on the tree where their nest is located.

Therefore, if we dissect their nests often we found a dead beetles or other insects that are larger than these ants. That privilege weaver ants so as to make them hold significance in controlling pests naturally. Simple enough, but not as well as the risk to the environment if we use chemical insecticides.

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