Velvety Tree Ant

Description:

This ant is increasingly becoming a pest in many areas in Central Washington.

Habitat:

Spotted in a rubber rabbitbush plant. They are known to have nest in trees and thick brush but more often in rotting wood.

Notes:

After finding no aggression between workers collected from significant distances apart and no territorial boundary, Wang et al. (2010) speculated that L. occidentale colonies are large and polydomous. Since they never found brood or queens, it is uncertain whether there are multiple queens within a nest, or whether each queen has some localized "sphere of exclusivity." and it just seems unlikely that there could be just one queen that produces enough eggs to establish a colony that is one kilometer wide, they also speculated that L. occidentale are polygyne. Colonies have been estimated to contain between 40,000 and 60,000[6] workers. Colony foundation of this species has not been studied as well as it has with the other two North American species.-Wikipedia