The engineering and defensive skills of red wood ants help the endangered species transcend its small stature in the natural world.

Otherwise, ants only really pose a significant problem when they start protecting honeydew-producing aphids. Ants protect these leaf-feeding aphids, primarily because they secrete a sugar-rich ...

Other facts: Black garden ants don’t just hunt food—they farm it. They often live alongside colonies of aphids, which secrete a substance called honeydew that ants eat. The ants “milk” the ...

and aphids that feed on plant sap and excrete a sweet "honeydew" that ants find delicious. One common instance of symbiosis teams up microbe and plant. Legume plants, such as peas and beans ...

Common black ants are known as garden ants because they like to live close to aphids, which excrete their favorite sweet food — honeydew. When any ants enter your home, it’s usually because ...

Other ant species herd aphid 'cattle', which they eat and also milk for honeydew, a plant sap excreted by the aphids. They even have their own ‘fences’ to prevent the aphids from straying away.

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