Carpenter Ant

Description:

Global warming is certainly noticeable in many different ways, San Cristobal has always been cool to cold most of the year and one tiny benefit of that is......almost no ants! Since our area has begun to be much warmer in recent years, I am now noticing many more species of ants everywhere. This year for the first time I came across this very large ant. There were about 25 of them running about a cement garden entrance under a light. I saw them only at night and only for a few nights in May. It was impossible not to notice them because they were almost 1 cm long. This ant is strictly a liquid feeder as adults, feeding on plant sap and dead animal juices. It is one of the Carpenter Ants. Family Formicidae, Formicinae.

Habitat:

In the street and entrance to a gated house, semi-rural residential area, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico 2,200 meters.

Notes:

I am wondering if they might all have been queens, the dark bands on each side of the thorax look like wing scars. It is not supposed to be this far south, although the pine-oak-juniper habitat is to its liking. https://www.antweb.org/description.do?ge... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus... https://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Camponotus_... https://www.naturalista.mx/observations/...