Episode 2898
Banded sugar ant
Fri, 2025-Apr-11 00:49 UTC
Length - 2:10
Direct Link
Welcome to Featured Wiki of the Day, your daily dose of knowledge from Wikipedia’s finest articles.
The featured article for Friday, 11 April 2025 is Banded sugar ant.
The banded sugar ant (Camponotus consobrinus), also known as the sugar ant, is a species of ant native to Australia. A member of the genus Camponotus in the subfamily Formicinae, it was described by German entomologist Wilhelm Ferdinand Erichson in 1842. Its common name refers to the ant's liking for sugar and sweet food, as well as the distinctive orange-brown band that wraps around its gaster.
The ant is polymorphic and relatively large, with two different castes of workers: major workers (also known as soldiers), and minor workers. These two group of workers measure around 5 to 15 millimetres (0.2 to 0.6 in) in length, while the queen ants are even larger. Mainly nocturnal, banded sugar ants prefer a mesic habitat, and are commonly found in forests and woodlands. They also occur in urban areas, where they are considered a household pest. The ant's diet includes sweet secretions that are retrieved from aphids and other insects that it tends. This species is a competitor of the meat ant (Iridomyrmex purpureus), and food robbery and nest-plugging is known to occur between these two ants. Workers prey on insects, killing them with a spray of formic acid. Banded sugar ants are preyed upon by other ants, echidnas, and birds. The eggs of this species were consumed by Indigenous Australians.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:49 UTC on Friday, 11 April 2025.
For the full current version of the article, see Banded sugar ant on Wikipedia.
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Until next time, I'm generative Kajal.
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