Talk:Red harvester ant

Species of Seeds Used? I live in South Texas USA and have a few nests of Harvester Ants, at least 3 within throwing distance of my front door. I've seen a Texas Horned Lizard a couple of times in 22 years here. I have added some species of grasses to my place and cut out one invasive species as best I can, but can find very info on what species are best food sources to provide. I've seen only one, Texas Grama, but that is in a seed catalog I use. Can anyone direct me to better sources for this info? Or add it here? Thanks!SophoraDeceased (talk) 16:20, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

"red harvester ants"
I didn't know that this common name referred to a single Pogonomyrmex. I don't know for sure, but I think this is wrong.-- FUNK A MATIC      ~talk   03:59, 9 April 2010 (UTC) - please add a source for saying they are being displaced

Behavior and abundance
This article could contain much more. This is a characteristic ant of Texas and used to be found more frequently. When I was studying zoology in graduate school, I was told that the tunnels of a colony of "Pogo ants" always reach to the water table or at least to permanently moist soil. (Some adventurous soul had rented a backhoe and dug up several colonies to see how deep they went -- more than 30 feet. I consider it insane to mess with these things on that scale; I was stung by one once and it hurts.)  Anyway, I am not sure if this can be verified. The decline in abundance of these ants might be related to the general lowering of the water tables, and not to competition from other ants. 24.27.31.170 (talk) 00:28, 21 July 2011 (UTC) Eric

I think that the decline in abundance should be its own category. This of course would require more sources and research, but as the above comment states, the decline could be due to other factors. If a species is failing to adapt and is in decline, possibly to extinction, the cause should be determined and recorded. Floyd Burney (talk) 04:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

edits
I'm enrolled in a college ecology class, and we had an assignment to edit a wikipedia article. I attempted to help the organization of this article and I added a lot of information about foraging behavior, including several references. Hopefully this improved the article at least in amount of information provided. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aschefkind (talk • contribs) 04:18, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

critique
Hey, this is a great article. The information is all there and its easy to follow and understand. I feel like instead of having so many sections, you have just use better organization to form fewer, stronger paragraphs. I think you can move the 'initial colony formation' to the top of colonization instead of making it as a subsection. Also, 'sexual selection' can probably be combined with 'mating behavior'. Lastly, I would remove the 'captive ecology' section first until you find more data or sources as it is the weakest section in the article. Overall, great job!. Pocketkings (talk) 03:51, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Article review
I think this article is pretty good. The sections are relatively concise and meaningful, which is good. I think the recent additions really beefed up on the information in this article and made it a much stronger candidate for improving the article status. One thing I noticed that was missing is a description of the organism, which would be really helpful in addition to the pictures. Information on range would also be very helpful to add, as other than in the intro there is no indication of where they live. Overall, a well polished article so far, but could use some additional info. JSDavis2 (talk) 04:58, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

No reliable source for species barbatus foraging 50-60km
The article is like the proverbial curate's egg - good in parts. What's bad (highly suspicious) is the Lede sentence that "Ant foraging is guided by chemical signals that lead the ants up to 50–60 km from the nest at times" when there's a whole section later on Foraging that makes no such claim - no mention at all, in fact. The Lede is meant to be an introduction summarising what's to come, not a place for unique facts absent from the main article-in-depth. Plus the "50-60km" statement is extraordinary - an ant walks 60km, finds a seed and decides to carry it a further 60km home? Won't an ant get hungry after 5-6km, and go back home to eat? Is 50-60km true, or a mistype? What evidence is there to support the huge claim? So I checked the source, stated as http://www.antark.net/ - no, zero mention, it's just a homepage. Then, digging around, I navigated to http://www.antark.net/ant-species/red-harvester-ant-pogonomyrmex-barbatus.html - there, it states "There are hundreds of different 'harvester ant' species found world wide. Pogonomyrmex barbatus is commonly known as the red harvester ant. These ants use their large mandibles to grind seeds into a ‘bread’ which is placed in storage areas called ‘granaries’ found in their nest for year round food. Worker ants can be found collecting seeds as far as 50-60 Km from their nest, they use their chemical scent trails to navigate back to the nest." Okay, sounds reasonable - but where did they get their information from? Then I found a Jan 2013 newsletter from India at "http://sprouts.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/SPROUTS-Newsletter-1.1_2013.pdf‎" - this seems the origin of AntArk's 50-60km info, as page 2 of the PDF describes "Ants of Mumbai. In this article Omkar Pai, an intern, educates you about some common ants found in the Mumbai region. . . . Harvester Ants (Pogonomyrex sps): These ants typically live ... (etc) ... These ants grind seeds into ‘bread’ which is placed in their nest’s storage area called ‘granaries’ for year round food. They can be found collecting seeds as far as 50-60 Km from their nest, using their chemical scent trails to navigate back to the nest." The last part is almost word-for-word the same as AntArk's, but it describes a NON-SPECIFIC species (sps) on a DIFFERENT continent. Now re-read the AntArk website paras, and you'll realise that AntArk used info about "different 'harvester ant' species found world wide" including India's Sprouts Environmental Trust PDF info, to fill their Pogonomyrmex barbatus Intro. They've assumed (or inadvertantly suggested) the info applies across all red ant species, without evidence. Wikipedia should not compound AntArk's error by repeating it! And what's the Indian intern's scientific source for saying pogonomyrex sps forages 50-60km? Sadly the PDF gives no sources or refs. Wikipedia's Pogonomyrmex article lists 28 species, of which 7 have their own page, but NOWHERE in ANY of the 7+1=8 articles is wide-ranging foraging mentioned - except in the Lede of this one. This article's Foraging section does however state that "Much research has been done on the foraging behavior of the red harvester ant.", so 50-60km might be true - but there's (so far) no reliable source for it. Rather than delete, I'll move the sentence to a relevant part of the Foraging section, and flag it as needing a better source. Pete Hobbs (talk) 15:36, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Interesting. "50-60 km" is obviously wrong, it must be 50 - 60 m and we need to find the source of that info. Yes, the information in this artile should be about this species only, not a species in India which probably does not belong to the same genus.  Pogonomyrmex is a New World (Western hemisphere) genus.  Apparently somebody has added to the article in an irresponsible way; thanks for pointing it out.  I have a personal belief that "lede" is not a correct spelling of "lead," meaning "introduction", though. 72.182.33.219 (talk) 06:54, 28 June 2014 (UTC) Eric
 * Concerning lede, I think the spelling is ugly, but useful. See Lead paragraph for details. JonRichfield (talk) 08:48, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Comment/Advisable Edit
This article could benefit from a "Taxonomy" and/or "Morphology" section that describes the physical attributes/characteristics of the Red Harvester Ant in detail for identification and general knowledge purposes. Sandyamuchimilli (talk) 20:08, 11 September 2014 (UTC)