![]() ![]() ![]() Once reaching mature status, at about five years of age, a colony consists of an essentially stable population of about 10-12,000 ants. Red Harvester ants live in large underground colonies consisting of a queen and several thousand attending worker ants. The facts cited below about Red Harvester Ant colonies are mostly from Deborah Gordon’s book, Ants At Work. Gordon began her research in 1985 as a graduate student, continued it as a post-doctoral researcher and later a faculty member at Stanford University. Ants At Work is the result of a 17-year study by Deborah Gordon of 300 colonies of Pogonomyrmex barbatus that were scattered over a 25-acre site in SE Arizona and SW New Mexico. Yes, the hard way, as described in the opening paragraph above! It was soon after that Ants At Work 1, a delightful and well-written little book about these fascinating little creatures, came our way. It was 18 years ago, when Casitas de Gila Guesthouses were just getting started, that the presence of Red Harvester ants was discovered on the premises. Red Harvester Ant Colony on east side of Bear Creek at Casitas de Gila Guesthouses this colony has a central mound 9 inches high and 6 feet across encircled by a cleared area14 feet in diameter colonies such as this are easily seen on Google Earth Several years ago this entomologically-challenged, geology-oriented naturalist found this out after laboriously following his GPS through rugged Mule Creek Country terrain to a number of these puzzling circular features discovered on Google Earth while previewing an upcoming hike. Larger nests are readily seen on Google Earth’s aerial photos. One of the reasons that they have been studied so much is because they are big, about 8 to 10 mm or 3/8ths of an inch! Another is that their colonies make very obvious nests that dot the New Mexico landscape. There are 44 genera and over 200 different species of ants in New Mexico, but perhaps none have been studied as much as the Red Harvester Ant. And what interesting little creatures they are! But stand there long enough and the answer will eventually become suddenly and perhaps painfully clear as the first of them begin to make their way up your pant leg and start to bite and sting! Yes, these ARE ant nests! An ant colony to be correct, home of Pogonomyrmex barbatus, New Mexico’s Red Harvester Ants. Pondering these strange features in the early morning, a cool, cloudy day late in the Fall or early Spring or during the hottest part of a Summer day, it may not be immediately evident what produced them. Upon closer examination, one soon notices that these barren areas all contain a central low mound of clean, well sorted, coarse sand to granular pieces of quartz and rock. Hike almost anywhere below 6,000 feet elevation in Southern New Mexico where the ground has a few feet of soil cover, and especially where some grass is present, and you will probably come across circular, barren areas, some up to 30 feet in diameter, that are typically devoid of all or almost all vegetative growth. The largest and oldest Red Harvester Ant Colony at Casitas de Gila located on the west side of Bear Creek just below the Casitas, midway up the slope between the first and second creek terraces above the floodplain Get an E-Mail Notice About New Blog Posts!. ![]()
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