''Dorylus'', also known as driver ants, safari ants, or siafu, is a large

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

army ant The name army ant (or legionary ant or ''marabunta'') is applied to over 200 ant species in different lineages. Because of their aggressive predatory foraging groups, known as "raids", a huge number of ants forage simultaneously over a limit ...

s found primarily in central and east

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, although the range also extends to

southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a number of ...

and tropical

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

. The term siafu is a

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...

from Swahili, and is one of numerous similar words from regional

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The t ...

used by

indigenous peoples Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

to describe various species of these ants. Unlike the

New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...

members of the former subfamily Ecitoninae (now

Dorylinae Dorylinae is an ant subfamily, with distributions in both the Old World and New World. Brady ''et al.'' (2014) synonymized the previous dorylomorph subfamilies (Aenictinae, Aenictogitoninae, Cerapachyinae, Ecitoninae, and Leptanilloidinae) under ...

), members of this genus form temporary subterranean bivouacs in underground cavities which they excavate and inhabit - either for a few days or up to three months. Also unlike some New World army ants, driver ants are not specialized predators of other species of ant, instead being more generalistic with a diet consisting of a diversity of arthropods.

Colonies In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

are enormous compared to other army ants and can contain over 20 million individuals. As with their American counterparts, workers exhibit caste polymorphism with the soldiers having particularly large heads that power their scissor-like

mandible In anatomy, the mandible, lower jaw or jawbone is the largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton. It forms the lower jaw and holds the lower tooth, teeth in place. The mandible sits beneath the maxilla. It is the only movabl ...

s. They are capable of

stinging Sting may refer to: * Stinger or sting, a structure of an animal to inject venom, or the injury produced by a stinger * Irritating hairs or prickles of a stinging plant, or the plant itself Fictional characters and entities * Sting (Middle-earth ...

, but very rarely do so, relying instead on their powerful shearing jaws. Driver ant queens are the largest living ants known, with the largest measuring between 40 - 63 millimeters (1.5 - 2.4 inches) in total body length depending on their physiological condition.

Life cycle

Seasonally, when

food Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is inge ...

supplies become short, they leave the hill and form marching columns of up to 50,000,000 ants, which are considered a menace to people, though they can be easily avoided; a column can only travel about 20 metres in an hour. It is for those unable to move, or when the columns pass through homes, that there is the greatest risk. Their presence is, conversely, beneficial to certain human communities, such as the

Maasai Maasai may refer to: * Maasai people *Maasai language * Maasai mythology * MAASAI (band) See also * Masai (disambiguation) * Massai Massai (also known as: Masai, Massey, Massi, Mah–sii, Massa, Wasse, Wassil or by the nickname "Big Foot" Mas ...

, as they perform a pest prevention service in farming communities, consuming the majority of other crop-pests, from insects to large

rat Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents. Species of rats are found throughout the order Rodentia, but stereotypical rats are found in the genus ''Rattus''. Other rat genera include ''Neotoma'' ( pack rats), ''Bandicota'' (bandicoot ...

s. For example, driver ants prey on larvae of the African sugarcane borer, a pest moth in sub-Saharan Africa. The characteristic long columns of ants will fiercely defend themselves against anything that attacks them. Columns are arranged with the smaller ants being flanked by the larger soldier ants. These instinctively take up positions as sentries, and set a perimeter corridor through which the smaller ants can run safely. Their bite is severely painful, each soldier leaving two puncture wounds when removed. Removal is difficult, however, as their jaws are extremely strong, and one can pull a soldier ant in two without it releasing its hold. Large numbers of ants can kill small or immobilized animals and strip them to husks. A large part of their diet is earthworms. All ''Dorylus'' species are blind, and, like most varieties of ants, communicate primarily through

pheromone A pheromone () is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting like hormones outside the body of the secreting individual, to affect the behavio ...

s. In the mating season,

alate Alate (Latin ''ālātus'', from ''āla'' (“wing”)) is an adjective and noun used in entomology and botany to refer to something that has wings or winglike structures. In entomology In entomology, "alate" usually refers to the winged form o ...

s (winged drones, queens of driver-ant species do not grow wings) are formed. The drones are larger than the soldiers and the queens are even larger. Driver ants do not perform a nuptial flight, but mate on the ground and the queens go off to establish new colonies. As with most

ant Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22 ...

s, workers and soldiers are sterile females, and so do not reproduce. Dorylus helvolus, l, Seringveld

Male driver ants, sometimes known as "sausage flies" (a term also applied to males of New World dorylines) due to their bloated, sausage-like

abdomen The abdomen (colloquially called the belly, tummy, midriff, tucky or stomach) is the part of the body between the thorax (chest) and pelvis, in humans and in other vertebrates. The abdomen is the front part of the abdominal segment of the torso. ...

s, are among the largest ant morphs and were originally believed to be members of a different species. Males leave the colony soon after hatching but are drawn to the scent trail left by a column of siafu once they reach sexual maturity. When a colony of driver ants encounters a male, they tear his wings off and carry him back to the nest to be mated with a virgin queen. As with all ants, the males die shortly afterward. After mating, the queen will lay up to 1,000,000 eggs per month. Such is the strength of the ant's jaws that, in East Africa, they are used as natural emergency sutures. Various East African indigenous tribal peoples (e.g.

moran), when suffering from a gash in the bush, will use the soldiers to stitch the wound by getting the ants to bite on both sides of the gash, then breaking off the body. This use of ants as makeshift

surgical staple Surgical staples are specialized staples used in surgery in place of sutures to close skin wounds or connect or remove parts of the bowels or lungs. The use of staples over sutures reduces the local inflammatory response, width of the wound, a ...

s creates a seal that can hold for days at a time, and the procedure can be repeated, if necessary, allowing natural healing to commence. Several species in this genus carry out raids on

termitaria Termites are small insects that live in colonies and have distinct castes (eusocial) and feed on wood or other dead plant matter. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blattode ...

, paralyzing or killing termites and carting them back to the nest.Biotropics
Colonies of driver-ant species have only one queen. When she dies, the surviving workers may try to join another colony, but in other cases, when two colonies of the same driver-ant species meet, they usually change the marching directions to avoid conflicts.

Species

* '' D. acutus'' Santschi, 1937 * '' D. aethiopicus'' Emery, 1895 * '' D. affinis'' Shuckard, 1840 * '' D. agressor'' Santschi, 1923 * '' D. alluaudi'' Santschi, 1914 * '' D. atratus'' Smith, 1859 * '' D. atriceps'' Shuckard, 1840 * '' D. attenuatus'' Shuckard, 1840 * '' D. bequaerti'' Forel, 1913 * '' D. bishyiganus'' (Boven, 1972) * '' D. braunsi'' Emery, 1895 * '' D. brevipennis'' Emery, 1895 * '' D. brevis'' Santschi, 1919 * '' D. buyssoni'' Santschi, 1910 * '' D. congolensis'' Santschi, 1910 * '' D. conradti'' Emery, 1895 * '' D. depilis'' Emery, 1895 * '' D. diadema'' Gerstaecker, 1859 * '' D. distinctus'' Santschi, 1910 * '' D. ductor'' Santschi, 1939 * '' D. emeryi'' Mayr, 1896 * '' D. erraticus'' (Smith, 1865) * '' D. faurei'' Arnold, 1946 * '' D. fimbriatus'' (Shuckard, 1840) * '' D. fulvus'' (Westwood, 1839) * '' D. funereus'' Emery, 1895 * '' D. furcatus'' (Gerstaecker, 1872) * '' D. fuscipennis'' (Emery, 1892) * '' D. gaudens'' Santschi, 1919 * '' D. ghanensis'' Boven, 1975 * '' D. gribodoi'' Emery, 1892 – includes ''D. gerstaeckeri'' Emery, 1895 * '' D. helvolus'' (Linnaeus, 1764) * '' D. katanensis'' Stitz, 1911 * '' D. kohli'' Wasmann, 1904 * '' D. labiatus'' Shuckard, 1840 * '' D. laevigatus'' (Smith, 1857) * ''Dorylus lamottei'' (= ''D. gribodoi'') Bernard, 1953 * '' D. leo'' Santschi, 1919 * '' D. mandibularis'' Mayr, 1896 * '' D. mayri'' Santschi, 1912 * '' D. moestus'' Emery, 1895 * '' D. molestus'' Wheeler, 1922 * '' D. montanus'' Santschi, 1910 * '' D. niarembensis'' (Boven, 1972) * '' D. nigricans''

Illiger Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger (19 November 1775 – 10 May 1813) was a German entomologist and zoologist. Illiger was the son of a merchant in Braunschweig. He studied under the entomologist Johann Hellwig, and later worked on the zoological colle ...

, 1802 * '' D. ocellatus'' (Stitz, 1910) * '' D. orientalis'' Westwood, 1835 * '' D. politus'' Emery, 1901 * '' D. rufescens'' Santschi, 1915 * '' D. savagei'' Emery, 1895 * '' D. schoutedeni'' Santschi, 1923 * '' D. spininodis'' Emery, 1901 * '' D. stadelmanni'' Emery, 1895 * '' D. stanleyi'' Forel, 1909 * '' D. staudingeri'' Emery, 1895 * '' D. striatidens'' Santschi, 1910 * '' D. termitarius'' Wasmann, 1911 * '' D. titan'' Santschi, 1923 * '' D. vishnui'' Wheeler, 1913 * '' D. westwoodii'' (Shuckard, 1840) * '' D. wilverthi'' Emery, 1899

References

External links

Dorylus on Antweb
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1352647 Dorylinae Ant genera Taxa named by Johan Christian Fabricius