The Houston Zoo is home to a lot of animals, and some of them are often overlooked. This series of blog entries is focused on the animals that you may have missed on your last visit.
Between the mole rats and the reef tank in Natural Encounters lives a colony of a very unique type of ant. All ants have different levels of workers, but the honey pot ants have one special group that gives them their common name. These workers, called repletes, are little living storage chambers for their colony.
Honey pot ant repletes in Natural Encounters
In North America, our honey pot ants are in the genus Myrmecocystus. They are only found in the desert southwest, and the ants we have on exhibit are part of this group. There are other groups of ants native to the arid parts of Australia and Africa that have a similar adaptation. One important problem of living in an arid region is food; during wet or rainy periods there is more than any animal can eat, but during dry times food is scarce. Many animals store food during the wet periods, to have it available for the dry times. Honey pot ants do the same, only they store the spare food inside living members of the colony.
Workers will feed protein, nectar, and other foods to the repletes, whose bodies distend to look like fluid-filled globes. The repletes generally hang from the ceiling of the colony, simply waiting and being fed. When their habitat goes dry and food is limited, the repletes will regurgitate the food they are storing and give it back to the workers who fed them, who in turn share it with the entire colony.
Because most of what the repletes store is sweet, many native peoples consider them a delicacy, and eat them as treat when they can find the colonies. You can’t eat them, but to see our honey pot ant colony at the Houston Zoo all you need to do is follow the mole rat exhibit around the corner. The last few chambers next to the “front porch” are the home of our honey pot ants.
Of course, no animal is guaranteed to be visible on every visit. Even if you know where to look, you might still miss the animal if it is off exhibit. The honey pot ants are typically easy to see, and their underground colony is lit so you can even see the repletes, full of food, hanging from the ceiling. Check them out on your next visit to the Houston Zoo!
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That’s fascinating! I have never heard of honey pot ants. That’s so interesting the way the repletes stroe the food and then give it back to the worker ants during hard times.