Mary's odorous ant
Mary's odorous ant is a shiny two-coloured ant from North America. Its head and the front of its body are reddish brown, and the back end is black. It builds its home under clumps of grass, right among the roots.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its nest is one big cone-shaped room under a plant, with the roots working like scaffolding for the ants to sit on.
One colony can have many nests joined by little ant roads. By late summer there may be sixty nests.
In winter one nest can hold about 75,000 workers and many queens.
On early mornings after heavy rain, thousands of winged males fly off to look for other nests.
In winter, empty nests become cosy hiding places for snakes, lizards and spiders.
Most asked questions about Mary's odorous ant
?Who is Mary's odorous ant named after?
It is named after Mary Treat, the naturalist who discovered it.
?Where does Mary's odorous ant live?
In the eastern and central United States, in grassy places and wetlands.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Dolichoderus mariae
- Named by
- Forel, 1885
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Dolichoderus mariae (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by AntWeb.org. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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