profs Wendy's, ants of borneo

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:04]too long.

[00:00:25]>> Billy, why have we got zero viewers?

[00:00:27]Billy.

[00:00:28]>> Yeah.

[00:00:29]Got zero.

[00:00:31]>> I've been watching.

[00:00:32]>> Hit me up. Get the other one out.

[00:00:36]Chat.

[00:00:39]>> Hey, European ant keeper.

[00:00:42]>> This chat is about to start. So, should be a really good one on ants of Borneo. It's part three.

[00:01:00]Right. Call him again. He's got the answer to Borneo now.

[00:01:07]>> I like this one.

[00:01:10]>> I want I want to be I want to go to Bor.

[00:01:14]I want to go to Bor.

[00:01:15]>> Yeah, I would love to.

[00:01:20]>> Yeah, this chat should be epic.

[00:01:43]They tie you in and give you a Plenty of seats if you want seats.

[00:02:14]>> We got Dr. Wendy for this uh presentation.

[00:02:17]Right.

[00:02:24]I think everybody's got a chance to sit down and get comfy. So, I'm going to make a start.

[00:02:32]Um, thank you for coming along. Lovely to see you. I've seen some new faces.

[00:02:38]These are the faces I recognize in previous years. So, hopefully you can all see the screen. Okay. This is a a new location for for the talk. Um so we'll see how it goes. Um feel free to move if you can't see the screen.

[00:02:55]Um so I'm going to talk about the answer. For those of you that have been before, um you may have seen me talk about the answer before and this is why this is part three. So I've talked previously. So I'm really really lucky in that every year I get to go to Borneo as part of a field course that we run within the university.

[00:03:20]Um we go and stay in an area called Don Valley um at field center and spend about uh just over a week there. Uh and so every time I go I see new ants and learn new things about them. Um, so the first year I went, uh, I got super excited about the ants that I got to see out there. Um, my photography was questionable. U, it has gotten slightly better. Um, but it is really hard when you're there with about 30 students trying to take some really nice photos of some ants. So, you'll have to excuse the photography. And any video I take always always always has chatting students in the background. So you get the nice rainforest sound and then really annoying chatty students in the back. So um it's always it's always interesting to hear what they're saying.

[00:04:17]Uh so from the first time I went to Borneo um I I was I'm an entomologist. I teach entomology at university. Uh super interested in insects. It was it was like I was in heaven obviously in Borneo. There's four things everywhere.

[00:04:34]Um but I hadn't really started to get into ants so much. Um that came later with the very first Antcon actually. So uh Rich is the reason why I started to get into being invited to talk at Antcon and then realizing okay ants are pretty cool. Uh I did my PhD on dragonfly so I was a bit otherwise. So the more I went to Borneo, the more excited I was by the ants that I saw. So I want to tell you a little bit about some of the ants I've seen. Lots of these groups I'm sure will be very familiar to to most of you, if not all of you. Um, and one of the first ants I realized I kept seeing out there was Dia. And I kept seeing them by themselves. Um, I found it a little bit hard to recognize them first of all. Uh, but once I did and realized that they were always pretty much always solitary and if I got a good look, I'm getting old now older. My eyesight is not what it used to be. So, I struggle seeing up close like many old people. Um, so if I can get a really good look, you can see.

[00:05:42]I don't know how well you guys from the back can see, but they're covered in these wonderful u microsculpturing. So these beautiful almost fingerprint like lines all over their body. So often you can see that and you kind of get your eye in on the behavior of them. As I said, they tend to go solitary. Um sometimes you see them catching material or carrying material by themselves. Um so I'm getting to used to seeing those.

[00:06:10]So I find them really interesting.

[00:06:12]Finding a little bit more about them.

[00:06:13]I'm getting warm. Thank you for being here because I've warmed up enough to take my jumper off now. Um, one of the things I found really interesting is that like most ants um can pass each other food during doing something called trophilaxis. You may have heard of that where they pass fluids to one another.

[00:06:30]These guys can't really do that. They don't have the equipment to do that. Um, so actually they do something called pseudorphilaxis where they're still able to pass fluids from one another but not quite in the same way. So they're a little bit primitive in their behavior and what they're able to do.

[00:06:48]Um, but they're still obviously amazing to see. Um, and depending on on what uh fluid that they're passing, they'll change between kind of holding in their mouth and holding it in their in their teeth, which is a little bit strange.

[00:07:04]Okay.

[00:07:06]Obviously, if I'm in Borneo, I'm going to see mermaids. This is one of the first ants that I saw out there. The very first time I was out in Borne, I spent a lot of time repeating the words, look at the size of that ant in increasingly higher pitch. Uh this was peak pitch. Uh seeing these guys out there and then getting to grips with seeing them um a lot on the forest floor quite regularly doing their thing. Uh eventually seeing majors as well as minors.

[00:07:37]um seeing seeing them um basically going around their f business. Um finding some nests as well. So seeing them work within their nest. Um there are the one on the right hand side just a video of it just doing this thing on the forest floor having a bit of a clean. I don't know if I can get I can figure out that >> sounds of the probably some students in a minute.

[00:08:44]>> Look at that little >> difference.

[00:08:58]>> What was the little ant?

[00:08:59]>> I don't see. Yeah, the tiny. You'd see that in some of the videos. You don't really notice it when you're taking the video.

[00:09:07]Then you look back at the videos and this tiny tiny little little almost like a couple of millimeter ant wanders by no idea what they are.

[00:09:16]>> Um so reading up about the Merx obviously it's a really popular ant.

[00:09:20]Lots of people know it exists biggest.

[00:09:23]um and finding out actually that their their uh kind of social system is perhaps more complicated than we know about or knew about necessarily and that they actually have specialist foragers.

[00:09:35]So all the miners that we see though the smaller ones actually have specialist jobs. So some of them are specifically sent out to go and search for food and some of them actually then carry the food between their nets. So they have a series of connected nets and some of them will specialize on that. So even within the miners they have specialist roles. It's not something that seems to be terribly well known, but I find this super interesting in that even within this kind of cast system that we know about. They they still have specialist roles and it's not something we necessarily think of as having outside something like uh the leaf cutters for example.

[00:10:21]So it looks like the lads are now overwhelmed and chased them off. Look, he just chased that one off.

[00:10:26]>> You get the notion by the >> So we here having the students are with what's going on as well. We've done some experiments with the while we're out there um looking at recruitment based on different food types across different species. So, one of the things we do, we put like bits of chicken out or or in this case um basically sugar water um and look to see how the different species recruit uh other members. So, to have an understanding of how they work cooperatively when there's different types of food. So, that was an example of that. I don't know if you noticed, but there was a few different interactions going on um in that one.

[00:11:20]>> Same student.

[00:11:22]And so this is we found a nest. So this is one of the majors. You can see the difference in sizes quite clearly. So you've got a minor on the left and a major on the right. So much much bigger with that really chunky head. And it's not not um an individual that we see terribly often because they're not out foraging. So it tends to be the miners that are out foraging, the ma majors that are basically at the net defending the net. So it's really nice to see those species there.

[00:11:53]And then this is just found an old bit of um wood obviously breaking down and they I think they've basically established a nest within there. We spent a little bit of time watching individuals wandering back and forth uh with some excited students in the background.

[00:12:10]Okay, slightly different side to it now.

[00:12:13]So, this is uh a major that I've spotted uh moving quite strangely across the forest floor um with some help. It's obviously the kind of dark side of of this um Hopefully the guys at the back will be able to see that clearly. So there's the little video. So this is the one of the majors um being transported across the forest floor and somebody's dinner.

[00:12:49]That's great.

[00:12:53]>> I spent a lot of time watching these tiny ants manipulate this really big ant across the forest floor up and down. You imagine there's lots of leaves and up and down and through all these areas for ages watching them.

[00:13:11]You can see his legs moving from time to time as well.

[00:13:14]>> I was hoping that it was just moving because they were holding on to Don't say that. So, obviously I was interested then in what it was that was was doing this move. Um, and these little ants. So, I've zoomed in on my picture, so it's not super high quality.

[00:13:32]Um, but it's a mixer species. So, this is an army ant species. Um, so it's again quite a generic name given to to the large group of ants. Um so these these basically undergo foraging rain um grades um and they particularly focus on um mainly uh things like social insect. So wasps, termites and ants as well. So it's not a big surprise uh that they found of one of these ants.

[00:14:06]>> I don't know. I'm guessing um or they all operate together. I I imagine it probably depends. It's a really really big group generally called >> I read somewhere that small like that.

[00:14:27]>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean he wasn't dismembered but they were definitely carrying it.

[00:14:31]Yeah.

[00:14:32]>> Yeah. And he was twitching a little bit.

[00:14:36]Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They definitely work together. Um, so this is another group of ants that that work together. Um, that I started to see once again once I learned to recognize them. Started to see quite regularly out there. These are leptogenists.

[00:14:51]Uh, they have both a light and dark side to them. So the the light side of them um is when you see them in the day um they're incredible to watch. um video. So you see them uh moving prey in this case they're working again cooperatively to maneuver a spider that they've actually caught um and carry that away. I've seen them also most incredibly working together to dig worms out of the ground uh and basically pull the worms out the ground which apparently is something they do quite regularly. The dark side of these is that they are very stingy. Uh, and you quite often come across them if you're doing night walks where they run up your be like, which is less fun.

[00:15:48]I think this species was legit. Uh, it's really hard to tell them the species apart. And unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which way you look at it, in Borneo there are a lot of ants. is one of the real hot spot brands. Um, and there are about 14 species of electrogen out there which you'd have to get specimens and key out to be able to work out which one's which. So, some of them are more distinctly different and some of them look really really so often we can't get species level.

[00:16:30]>> Okay. 25.

[00:16:31]>> So outside the main forest, um we get to visit a mangrove. Um so it's not outside the the main rainforest. Uh it's a mangrove. Um and these were one of the first ants I saw when arriving in Borneo. So they're a bit of a favorite.

[00:16:48]And I'm sure you probably all know what they are.

[00:16:50]>> 25.

[00:16:55]>> Um so obviously it's pretty amazing to see the weaver ants. uh to see them there. Um do that to see them again. They tend to be uh together but in smaller numbers.

[00:17:07]Um you see them in position as well. And we have been lucky enough to be able to spot some of the nests up in the trees uh as well. So it's always great to see them. I said they're one of the first species of ants that I saw.

[00:17:22]>> Okay.

[00:17:27]Uh One of the previous talks I did on ants borneo and learning about some of the ants out there looking for research and there was a lot in the media about exploding ants. Okay. So, one of the things that I was talking about previously was ants that exploded. Uh, and there is a group of ants um they're called the the cylindrica group um which these belong to that all have the ability to explode. They don't actually explode. They basically rupture their abdomen that has toxins in it and when they smear it on would be predators.

[00:18:01]Okay. So like many social insects they give their lives to basically um look after the rest of their colony. Um so these guys here I don't know if these are explosions or collar boxes explodes.

[00:18:16]They look very similar. They could well be but there are a couple of other species that look very similar. And again, you can't tell them apart, unfortunately, just by looking. You'd have to get them under a microscope to key them out. But we see these guys very, very often. And they do have the the red and black markings associated with it as well.

[00:18:42]This is cylindrica, which give the group the name. Again, they have the potential to basically rupture uh and explode. Um, obviously collar boxes we know they use uh their heads basically the doorways.

[00:18:58]Um, don't often get to see that. I've got one photo later on um that happened to catch one that that had the doorway.

[00:19:06]Um, but this was a species that I saw for the first time um last year. I think it was obviously recognizable with these distinctive red heads and black bodies.

[00:19:17]It was really nice to see them.

[00:19:22]Okay, this is Leonardi. That's my bottom right hand picture. You can just about see. So, feel free to get up and move if you want to. You can just about see this guy here has got his little flattened head. Okay, so that's that kind of um doorway species. Again, they're still part of the cylindrical group, so in theory, they should be able to explode their bodies um should they want to. if they feel the need.

[00:19:57]Okay, we quite often so short video quite often see these um particularly associated with deadwood. Um so on on basically lying dead wood, big logs and things that are naturally fallen in the forest. Uh and they seem to really enjoy living in those.

[00:20:14]Okay, that's a different room. Yeah, these have become my favorites.

[00:20:19]>> Yeah, >> but also apparently not.

[00:20:27]>> So I I haven't planted all the poly rackets that are potentially in Borneo, but I think it's around 60 to 100 species. Okay, so they're a lot. They're really diverse group anyway.

[00:20:41]Um, and we get a lot out of them, but obviously they're associated uh with those spines. Okay. So often by looking at where the spines are um so they can have spines right at the front.

[00:20:55]It's called pronotum. So pronal spines.

[00:20:58]Uh they often have them at back. So methanotum spines. So that's the last segment of the thorax and on the ptl as well. So that small segment that's part of um become too originally part of the abdomen that's become in the middle.

[00:21:17]So when we're looking at at polyraus and trying to work out what species they are, it's really helpful to look where these spines are and that can often help us narrow down. But again, there are a lot of species that look really, really similar. Uh there's a couple of species where even though I sent them to Sam and I have to give special thanks to Sam because I'm always sending him pictures about Sam what's found this new ant what's it um and often you just can't tell what they are. So you can sort of narrow it down maybe narrow it down between a few species but you can't always get um species that uh polyraphus of course means many fun.

[00:21:56]Um so does everybody know what this is?

[00:21:59]Ar there is a suggestion that there is a subspecies called the fence that has the the red as but that's sort of in contention. So some people think it's a subspecies some people don't. Okay. So obviously one of the first ants I saw uh upon arriving out in the forest that was most distinctive was uh one of the golden ants. So this is Polyrakus Salon.

[00:22:30]It's the largest of the golden ants and most distinctive and it's it's stunning.

[00:22:34]It's beautiful. It's a large ant. They often hang around together. So you don't tend to see just one. You'll see a few at one time. So obviously then really bright and distinctive and they're named for the shape of their their spines, which is the epsilon um symbol.

[00:22:51]>> Not very imaginative, but there we go.

[00:22:57]So this is some of them in action.

[00:23:02]>> I like the color as well.

[00:23:05]>> Gold.

[00:23:12]>> Isn't the gold reflect the sun?

[00:23:14]>> It does reflect it.

[00:23:17]>> No, it's part of the defensive system.

[00:23:21]So obviously these spines particularly stop them being eaten. Um and the gold is again part of the defense. So there's lots of species that mimic the gold as a basically a defensive mechanism things like spiders. It seems to be a mechanism um veget.

[00:23:43]There's lots of mimicry of this gold.

[00:23:45]think it would make them really stand out and you know be really apparent to predators. But it's almost like um the bright colors that we see for toxic species something called anti-mitism where you advertise don't eat me look at me you know you really don't want to give this a try. So it's probably a similar um >> notice with the desert ants when they're like that bright silver that's so they can exist in the sunlight.

[00:24:11]>> Yeah, that's probably it deep in the forest. It's not warm when it's warm, but not that warm.

[00:24:19]Uh very similar. Then this is by Hamata.

[00:24:23]So another one of the golden ants tend to have shorter hairs on them. So shorter what's called publescent. So this hairiness. So not quite as bright and they're not quite as large. Um but sometimes it can be quite difficult to tell them apart. Um, and I don't know how well you can see this, but this uh the main spine here, the the spines are close together and then they just separate at the top. Whereas on Ipsilon, they separate lower down. So, it's more of that Y shape. So, we can tell them apart fairly easily um as long as I've got my glasses on um by those hooks.

[00:24:59]Okay. So, by just means double hook.

[00:25:05]So, again, this is an in action.

[00:25:19]you get a lot of happy antenny wiggling especially if they're they're feeding on sugar water that we've put there.

[00:25:29]Okay, new species then polyracus abdominalis. This is a species that fairly common uh throughout Borneo. It's found um more in urban areas as well and it's one that we've seen fairly regularly out there.

[00:25:49]So the video is showing subdominus is trundling around by itself. Um but it's well within lots and lots of coloropus the red and black ones but they be exploded and also some golden ants as well. So these are all existing. They don't really interact with one another beyond sort of going oh now walking past her there's no antagonistic sort of arguments or or attacking one another.

[00:26:16]They're just basically ignoring one another. So it was really nice to see three species together but don't take any notice of one another.

[00:26:26]>> Uh this is not an ant. This is a spider.

[00:26:29]You get lots and lots of spider mimics particularly of polyactus. I thought this spider in particular was a really good mimic of abdomomen. Okay. In terms of the size, in terms of the posture, um I've seen some spiders with golden hairs on them that obviously mimic mimicking some of the the more golden um polyactus as well.

[00:26:57]>> So, there are a lot of spider mimics out there.

[00:27:00]>> What do the spider do? Why are they Usually to get closer they hang out you look like you get closer >> in some cases I think with bold on a side advantage of that size >> okay this is our master this was one um that I learned about uh the first time I went to Borneo uh and was longing to see because I think they're really cool and see them fairly regularly out there and I think that they're one of the most exciting species out there. And I say the ones with the red abdomen are sometimes considered a subspecies called Spencer, but it is in in conception whether that's the case or if it's just a a slightly different color of the same species. You get a lot of color variations within individuals. We know uh this was such a strange site where I found one with Colop's Leonardi um stuck on his leg.

[00:28:19]>> So I think they've been attacking one another and perhaps the colorist has died stuck biting his leg, but they they were just sat there for ages with with color box stuck on his leg and he's probably got his teeth around his leg. I didn't know what was going on there. I took a photo of it.

[00:28:43]Okay, these are really little ant species that I see and I always see them on vegetation, so on. Uh they're small and they're shiny. And there's two species.

[00:28:56]Uh there's polyrakus in her and polyracus tibialis. And the only way you can really tell them apart is that tibialis has spines at the at the back basically um the metal spines whereas in this doesn't they just have spines at the front of the pron but because they're about that size and obviously you know as I said the aging eyes really really hard to tell apart so often I can only tell them apart with some questionable photos and bearing in mind these guys are always on the move as well so it's really hard. So, I've got a photo on the right hand side that I think is tibialis. I can just about make out some spines at the end. Um, but I really like seeing these. I think they're just cuz they're shiny and cute.

[00:29:44]This is one on the move. You get hopefully get an idea of how big it is.

[00:29:51]Bit small.

[00:29:54]Okay. This was a new species that I saw in January. So, another polyacus species. Um, it's got really short gold hairs on the thorax.

[00:30:05]Um, but the abdomen is really, really shiny. It's not super blue, but there's a hint of blue in there. Um, and we don't know what it is. Um, I've sent it to Sam. He was scratching his head. Um, I've seen species uh that are only found in the Philippines that look very similar, but the blue is brighter. Uh, and they're only found in the Philippines, so we know it's not that.

[00:30:30]Um, but beyond that, we don't know. So, don't It's definitely Polaris, but I don't know what species it is. So, if anybody's got any good ideas about what it could be, please let me know. But it was really obviously really exciting to see a new species. Uh, there was a few of them around foraging sort of fairly uh individually. Uh, and they were about the size gold mouth as well. So, good size, not indestinating.

[00:31:14]And obviously because they look so similar and you have to have a really high level of expertise to know if it's a new species or not.

[00:31:22]Uh okay, another species here. This is Polyrakus for Carta. Um recognizable by it's got a lot of sort of indentations on the thorax. It's really distinctive.

[00:31:36]It's fairly small for a polyraus. Um and it has these forked PTOA spines. Uh how well you can see that perhaps not so well here but it has got quite um and then on the right hand side it's having a drink with polyra.

[00:31:56]Okay this is the last polyrakus. So this is one I don't know what it is um exactly.

[00:32:05]So going f it could be a couple of species. It may be neither of these either. Um, but it does definitely look like that. But there there are almost 100 species recorded for borneo poly and it's going up each year as more are because it's a real hot spot for poly.

[00:32:24]So it's not surprising. We can't get everything.

[00:32:30]This is the last one. Then this is polyra pictures of them. Uh, this is one we see fairly regularly. It's got just small vines um mostly out the back. It has got some out the front as well. Quite a large species. Do you notice that it looks like another ant that we've seen?

[00:32:52]>> The camera. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, it's it's a mimic of dama. Not only does it look like it or mimic it in terms of behavior and how it moves as well. Um so, alongside that, there's another species that isn't polyactive. It doesn't have any spines. It's um a camposa species, but this is also a dioama mimic. Clearly, it's got a lot of those characteristics. So, there are a number of ant species that are mimicking other ant species again for that that kind of additional defense that you get with it.

[00:33:32]Okay, just to finish off, these are a whole number of ants that I've taken photos out there. So, obviously, I've seen more ants than I've shown you today, but it would be a really long talk of me going another picture of them out. Here's another picture. There are whole groups that I'm really I'm really rubbish at cannonosa. There's too many of them and they all look different. uh but I'm starting to get grips with some of them but there are loads of ant that we don't have time to talk about today.

[00:34:01]Every time I go there and seeing new species and as I'm learning I'm able to recognize the ones I know so that I know the ones I don't know if that makes sense. So I'm getting to grips with them there. The one on the bottom right hand side I know there is a six mirror. I see those almost every time. Um micaria they are very weird. there's a lot of legs going on there. Um, and some of the kind of high delay ones and portals. So, there's still loads and loads of answers to discover out there. Um, but I think that's probably enough for today. If anybody's got any questions, I'll happily answer um anything that anybody has.

[00:34:41]>> Can I come to you?

[00:34:42]>> I want to see them.

[00:34:48]>> Please.

[00:34:51]the app with the red and he said whee rather than the same species might be different um when new species are discovered there's a lot of work that goes into working out if they are new species um so within in collections or whatever animal we're talking about. The museum's call collection of what's called type specimen. Um, and they'll have a number of those specimens, but there's usually one type and it's like the official example of that species and then people will get what they think is a new species and compare it to that type and work out if it's different or not.

[00:35:49]also that there will be other now and then usually it has to be reported as paper and then people have to agree with it by every public as well. So that has to agree with that is on the sheet. It's not it's not like you go out there and go, "Okay, that's down give it a name." You know, it it is scientifically robust and process down to like hair placement in it and stuff. It'll be like if they got three hairs on their chest like this if it's this one or if there's two hairs like >> the tiniest details of even uh the the polyrais the shiny one that could be >> I can't what the names were now >> the rest yeah >> the one that was down to um portions of sizes of parts of the body and when it comes to that it's obviously very nuanced lots of things kind of details are very nuanced. Is it wider than this?

[00:37:00]So you're calculating proportions of width versus versus length of Oh, it was it was the the length of the pedestal or skateboard.

[00:37:10]Uh it so you're looking at the the size of a portion of the antenna to compare whether it's that or that that's so it is really on the same question. Could you look at the DNA of the ants or is the is it so close that looking at the antid? You you could look at DNA, but you still have to know you still have to >> it would you wouldn't know Yeah, >> it's coming down in price.

[00:38:20]Any other questions?

[00:38:27]>> Is there anything thinking ahead? And I know that that we're having a break next year, but is there anything that you would want to know about apart from can I go to Is there anything that you would want to see? If I could bring back videos or photographs or something, what would you want to know about or see? Maybe the variety of polyracus nests like the woven ones, the kind of folded leaf ones or caring ones.

[00:38:53]>> Yeah, >> so dwellers in here. It's too high up or hidden away in the uh