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Green ants and weevil

Ectocnemus decimmaculatus

Description:

A large straight-snouted (Brentidae) weevil is being dragged away by an army of green ants.

Habitat:

Found on the handrail of a boardwalk in the Kuranda rainforest

Notes:

Thank you Bayucca for assisting to ID the weevil. The green ants are weaver ants (Ecophylla smaragdina) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oecophylla_...

1 Species ID Suggestions

bayucca
bayucca 10 years ago
Straight-snouted Weevil
Ectocnemus decimmaculatus Australian Insect Sales - Brentidae


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16 Comments

MartinL
MartinL 10 years ago

Thanks Mark and Mohammed and Joshua and Luis

LuisStevens
LuisStevens 10 years ago

Great action shot Martin!

Josh Asel
Josh Asel 10 years ago

Dang Martin you are pumping out some awesome spottings!

Ma Sha Allah ..... those green are seriously beautiful... i hav never seen the such b4

Mark Ridgway
Mark Ridgway 10 years ago

The firing squad for him. Great find Martin.

MartinL
MartinL 10 years ago

Thanks for your detailed analysis professor bayucca.
I believe ozanimals and Aust.Insect Farm (facebook) are the same company but have two names for the same beetle. Then it easily gets copied by people like us. Thank you.

bayucca
bayucca 10 years ago

Isthenus sp.
http://www.papua-insects.nl/insect%20ord...
Looks for me complitely different.
This one and the other ones from my Papua links look being trustable:
http://www.papua-insects.nl/insect%20ord...
In my eyes also wrong ID from Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brenti...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithystenus
The facebook one is this one:
http://www.ozinsects.com/brentidae.php
In my eyes wrong ID!

MartinL
MartinL 10 years ago

I am bothered by some references to Ithystenus hollandiae here;
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=...
What do you think?
Yes the green ants are VERY common and weave foliage to make their nest. I will make a spotting for them later.

MartinL
MartinL 10 years ago

Thank you bayucca
I will go with your spelling.
I have loaded this into Bowerbird, an Australian site motivated to feed field data onto an image library, (ALA = atlas of living Australia) Its database uses your preferred spelling. See http://www.bowerbird.org.au/observations...

bayucca
bayucca 10 years ago

The ants look like being Oecophylla smaragdina, a weaver ant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oecophylla_...

bayucca
bayucca 10 years ago

Misspelling?? Really Ectocnemus or Ectocemus?. Please, verify the correct name!
http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?searc...
http://www.papua-insects.nl/insect%20ord...
http://www.papua-insects.nl/insect%20ord...
I in the meanwhile think it is actually Ectocemus decemmaculatus.

MartinL
MartinL 10 years ago

Thanks Lauren. I didn't rescue this one ;(
Nice Stephen. This beetle looks the same. The location is very nearby; maybe the same handrail. He is a better photographer than me (in fact it's an excellent photo) but neither of us have an ID

LaurenZarate
LaurenZarate 10 years ago

Neat picture! I hope the weevil got away…..

Love those green ants!! Never seen them before, thank you for sharing, martinl.

MartinL
Spotted by
MartinL

QLD, Australia

Spotted on Nov 26, 2013
Submitted on Dec 3, 2013

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