Small brown bush ant
The small brown bush ant is a little brown ant that lives only in New Zealand. It is very common in the forests there, from the beach up into the mountains. Its nest is a busy maze of tunnels with several queens inside.
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Fun facts
Its nest has many tunnels joined together, and the queens and males usually stay deep inside.
When food runs low, it gets braver and more grumpy with other kinds of ants.
On cold days it walks more slowly and takes longer to find food.
If a colony loses its queen, the workers can still lay eggs that grow into males.
A rare stag beetle lives only inside the nests of this ant and nowhere else.
Most asked questions about Small brown bush ant
?Where does the small brown bush ant live?
Only in New Zealand, where it is common in forests on both main islands.
?How big is the small brown bush ant?
Workers are about 2.9 to 3.5 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Prolasius advena
- Named by
- Smith, 1862
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Prolasius advenus (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 (c) Elias Freyhof, some rights reserved (CC BY). CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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