Kerengga Ant

• comportamientoIt builds nests by binding living leaves with silk from its own larvae, which the workers hold and use like weaving shuttles.
• It has been used as biological control in citrus and mango orchards in southern China for some seventeen hundred years, the oldest documented case of biological pest control in history.
• The ants and their larvae are eaten in Thailand and Laos, and the tart larvae are considered a delicacy.
• It sews leaves together with silk it does not produce itself: the workers hold a larva and tap its head to make it secrete silk, using it as a living tool.
• The workers form chains of bodies to pull separate leaves together; even large nests go up in under 24 hours.
• A colony can occupy more than a hundred nests spread across several trees and exceed half a million workers.
• The larger, older workers live in the satellite nests at the edge of the territory, because they are considered more expendable.
• It is used as biological pest control in tropical crops, cheaper and cleaner than pesticides.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Tree crowns in forests and tropical plantations of southern Asia and Australia

Litter / clutch size

The founding queen lays thousands of eggs, protected in silk chambers inside the brood nests

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oecophylla_smaragdina; NCBI PMC12180660, organizacion social de colonias de Oecophylla smaragdina; Ficha de especie de Oecophylla smaragdina; Lucid Apps, ficha Green weaver ant

Best time: A tropical species active all year, with no hibernation; the leaf nests are permanently visible in the crowns of the trees