Trophallaxis is the transfer of food or other fluids among members of a community through mouth-to-mouth (stomodeal) or anus-to-mouth (proctodeal) feeding. Along with nutrients, trophallaxis can involve the transfer of molecules such as pheromones, organisms such as symbionts, and information to serve as a form of communication. Trophallaxis is used by some birds, gray wolves, vampire bats, and is most highly developed in social insects such as ants, wasps, bees, and termites.
Honeypot ants, also called honey ants, are ants which have specialized workers that are gorged with food by workers to the point that their abdomens swell enormously. Other ants then extract nourishment from them. They function as living larders. Honeypot ants belong to any of several genera, including Myrmecocystus and Camponotus. They were first documented in 1881 by Henry C. McCook, and described further in 1908 by William Morton Wheeler.
The Formicinae are a subfamily within the Formicidae containing ants of moderate evolutionary development.
The laughing dove is a small pigeon that is a resident breeder in Africa, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent. This small long-tailed dove is found in dry scrub and semi-desert habitats where pairs can often be seen feeding on the ground. A rufous and black chequered necklace gives it a distinctive pattern and is also easily distinguished from other doves by its call. Other names include laughing turtle dove, palm dove and Senegal dove while in India the name of the little brown dove is often used. It was introduced in Western Australia and has established itself in the wild around Perth and Fremantle.
Thelytoky is a type of parthenogenesis in which females are produced from unfertilized eggs, as for example in aphids. Thelytokous parthenogenesis is rare among animals and reported in about 1,500 species, about 1 in 1000 of described animal species, according to a 1984 study. It is more common in invertebrates, like arthropods, but it can occur in vertebrates, including salamanders, fish, and reptiles such as some whiptail lizards.
The Sahara Desert ant is a desert-dwelling ant of the genus Cataglyphis. It primarily inhabits the Sahara Desert and is one of the most heat tolerant animals known to date. However, there are at least four other species of Cataglyphis living in the Sahara desert, for example C. bombycina, Cataglyphis savignyi, Cataglyphis mauritanicus and C. fortis. Also, specimens of C. bicolor have been found well north of Sahara.
Adoxotoma is a genus of South Pacific jumping spiders that was first described by Eugène Louis Simon in 1909.
A queen ant is an adult, reproducing ant in an ant colony; generally she will be the mother of all the other ants in that colony. Some female ants, such as the Cataglyphis, do not need to mate to produce offspring, reproducing through asexual parthenogenesis or cloning, and all of those offspring will be female. Others, like those in the genus Crematogaster, mate in a nuptial flight. Queen offspring ant develop from larvae specially fed in order to become sexually mature among most species. Depending on the species, there can be either a single mother queen, or potentially hundreds of fertile queens in some species. Queen ants have one of the longest life-spans of any known insect – up to 30 years. A queen of Lasius niger was held in captivity by German entomologist Hermann Appel for 283⁄4 years; also a Pogonomyrmex owyheei has a maximum estimated longevity of 30 years in the field.
The wildlife of Tunisia is composed of its flora and fauna. It has 84 species of mammals and 375 species of birds. Tunisia is well documented for its addax and Dama Gazelle population.
Erysimum baeticum is an annual to perennial herb endemic to some mountains in the SE of Spain. This species has two subspecies: Erysimum baeticum bastetanum is found only in the Sierra de Baza, inhabiting the subalpine pine forests, from 1500 to 2000 m. a.s.l.. Erysimum baeticum baeticum is a subspecies endemic to the eastern range of the Sierra Nevada, inhabiting subalpine shrublands. Both subspecies flower during late May thru early July, displaying up to one hundred showy purple flowers arranged in several short stalks.
The Saharan silver ant is an ant that lives in the Sahara Desert. Saharan silver ant is the fastest of the world’s 12,000 known ant species. It clocks a blistering 855 millimetres — nearly a metre — per second. It covers 108 times its own body length per second, a feat topped only by two other creatures, the Australian tiger beetle and the California coastal mite. Largely due to the extreme high temperatures of their habitat, but also due to the threat of predators, the ants are active outside their nest for only about 10 minutes per day. The twin pressures of predation and temperature restrict their above-ground activity to within a narrow temperature band between that at which predatory lizards cease activity and the ants' own upper threshold.
Brachysiraceae is a family of diatoms.
Kollasmosoma sentum is a parasitoid wasp in the family Braconidae, which lays its eggs inside adult ants. It was featured as one of "the top 10 new species of 2012" in a list compiled by Conservationists at the Arizona State University International Institute for Species Exploration.
Formicini is a tribe of ants in the subfamily Formicinae.
Cataglyphis fortis is a species of ant in the genus Cataglyphis. Found in Tunisia, the ants inhabit salt pans where they forage dead arthropods.
Cataglyphis cursor is a species of ant in the genus Cataglyphis. Described in 1846, it is known only from the Mediterranean parts of France.
Cataglyphis iberica is a species of desert ant found in the Iberian Peninsula. It was described by Carlo Emery in 1906.
