14 Facts About Meat ant

Meat ant, known as the gravel ant or southern meat ant, is a species of ant endemic to Australia.

The meat ant is associated with many common names due to its appearance, nest-building behaviour and abundance, of which its specific name, purpureus, refers to its coloured appearance.

Meat ant is monomorphic, although there is evidence that certain populations can be polymorphic.

The meat ant is a diurnal species, especially when it is warm.

Meat ant was first described in 1858 by British entomologist Frederick Smith in his Catalogue of Hymenopterous Insects in the Collection of the British Museum part VI, under the binomial name Formica purpurea from a holotype worker ant he collected in Melbourne, Victoria.

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One synonym, Iridomyrmex greensladei, was described as a separate species from the meat ant based on the anatomical differences of its head and pronotum, which are the same colour as its mesosoma.

Under the present classification, the meat ant is a member of the genus Iridomyrmex in the tribe Leptomyrmecini, subfamily Dolichoderinae.

Meat ant recognised another form, an undescribed blue form that was first studied several years earlier.

Meat ant is one of the best-known species of ant endemic to Australia; it has an enormous geographical range, covering at least one-third of the continent.

The Meat ant is particularly dominMeat ant and frequently seen across the coastal and inland regions of southeastern Australia.

The Meat ant is a polydomous species, meaning that they live in more than one nest.

The meat ant is the only known ant in Australia that feeds on fresh guano.

Such cases usually happen when pleometrotic founding occurs, or if a queen Meat ant is adopted by a colony, setting up aggressive relationships.

The victorious Meat ant will remain raised upward and reach down to the worker and open its mandibles wider, grasping on the opponent's mandibles, and then tug and shake its head slightly for a few moments.