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“they fall into categories of either ”black” or “red” according to my own carefully thought-out classification system.”
Those are quite clearly of the black variety. 🙂
They look like some brand of Formica to me. I’m sure someone of with more ant oriented background will be along to clarify.
Peter beat me to it: yes, the identification is as simple as saying these are indeed “black ants” as opposed to “red ants.” Problem solved. To be more specific in the ID, they are “sap sucking black ants.” Hey, this identification thing is easier than I thought.
But OK, I can be serious: I haven’t a clue on the ID.
And for totally random camera settings (an approach I know all too well), these are pretty darn good pictures!
Nice shots- ants aren’t easy! I agree. These are black ants.
(or maybe, Formica subsericea)
On the other hand, you probably don’t want to trust my ant ID skills these days…
Bah. It fooled you, me, and a ton of other people. No harm done, and an incredibly cool example of the power of social media (and an incredibly cool fossil, to boot).
I also use the dual category system, but my varieties are either “big” or “little.”
I’m really beginning to see the potential of this new ant ID system. Can I suggest also adding stingy and non-stingy?
So, these ants are: black-small-nonstingy.
By way of contrast, these ants at myrmecos blog are: red-small-stingy!
I like it!
Those are completely do-able categories. We shall indeed add them to the classification system.
When I was collecting ants in Argentina- a country that must have more than 600 species- most people divided ants into two species: The little red ones that sting, and the black ones that eat the garden.
One guy insisted that Argentina had more than that. There were three species: the red stinging ants, the black garden-eating ants, and the winged ants.
I’m glad to hear so many other people employ similar ID systems! (And that we’re all in agreement that these are, indeed, Black Ants) 😛
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