I pick up Jethro, my grandson, from school a couple of times a week by bus, which is my preferred means of transportation because it keeps me from having to drive on the wrong (left) side of the road.
After three weeks of torrential rains we finally had a nice day, so when the bus dropped us off at our stop, I decided to sit down on the bench inside the bus shelter, enjoy the sunshine and drink the milkshakes we had purchased from an ice-cream stand just before getting on the bus.
That's when I noticed it: a large colony of bugs that were darting quickly across the concrete wall behind the bench we were about to sit on.
Winged ants at Roseville Chase bus stop
I quickly changed my mind about our sitting and asked Jethro to step aside as I moved in to have a closer look. What I saw to my amazement were ants, lots of them, with wings, and flying!
I quickly reminded myself, I was in Oz.
Flying Monkey from The Wizard of Oz
I read that it is hard to tell a winged ant from a termite (flying monkeys are easy to identify), so I sought out professional help.
I found the AntBlog website and noticed folks were sending in pictures of their ants to be identified so, of course, I did likewise.
After only a day I received a response from Dr. Brian Fisher, Curator and Entomology and Patterson Scholar with Fisher Lab. He confirmed that the ants in my picture are ants of the genus Iridomyrmex.
There are over 79 different member species of ants from this genus found throughout Australia. The species of the ant below (enlarged) is the Iridomyrmex purpureus and goes by the name Meat Ant. It is the most dominant and earned its name because it consumes large animal carcasses, down to the bone, within weeks.
They are very aggressive towards predators and will bite anything that steps on the nest, even you!
I was a bit worried that the bugs would fly over and attack us, but they seemed too engaged in their own activity to be alarmed by our presence.
What is fascinating about these ants is that their wings are associated with the reproduction of the entire colony.
Large queens and small males are born with wings in preparation for a nuptial flight which is triggered by some kind of environmental cue - humidity, balmy temperatures, or even perhaps just because it's a nice day like the one Jethro and I were experiencing. Scientists are not really sure what signals the flight.
Winged males and females from other colonies (to avoid inbreeding) take off from their nests in a synchronized fashion and fly to a common location to mate.
Sort of like they all got the memo.
When the nuptial flight phenomenon occurs, with no formal announcement, the date is observed as "Flying Ant Day."
The event seems to be seasonal and occurs most often in late summer or early fall but, because the ants get their cues from the weather, which is not always consistent, it can happen on more than one day within the same year.
The picture below is of "Flying Ant Day" in Geelong, Victoria, located just southwest of Melbourne, Australia. The event took place in March of 2017 just after a period of heavy autumn rains. The fall season in Australia runs from March 1st through the 31st.
In Sydney, like Geelong, we also experienced a rainy autumn that lasted for three weeks, most of March. Although ants are very buoyant when they need to be, during heavy rains they keep dry by staying in underground chambers.
I stayed at the nest just long enough to shoot the short video below. As you can see, now that the rain has passed, the ants are pretty frisky.
In Dr. Fisher's emailed comments, he said: "the winged ones are newly produced queens that will fly away, mate and try to start new colonies."
This led me to believe that the colony I had found may be young, since there were so many visible queens.
During the nuptial flight the queen leaves and mates with several drones, then drops her wings, finds a new nest location and digs a hole to lay eggs.
Large ant nests along Sydney's country roadsides can contain tens of thousands of workers, winged queens, and males, and the process will start over.
The rest of the queen's life (up to ten years or more) is spent caring for the eggs and fertilizing them with the sperm that was stored during the mating process. The winged male reproductive ants die.
I have a new found respect for ants with wings and their importance when it comes to increasing and extending their colonies.
Now, when I see very large ants crawling around on the ground I think they may be queens who have just lost their wings and are in search of a good location to start a new home and family.
Roseville Chase Bus Stop
Later that day I decided to return to the bus stop to get a better video of the ants, but I was too late, they were gone - every last one!
I may have missed their nuptial flight, if they had one, but at the very least, I learned a thing or two about flying ants, which I have only ever seen in Australia.
