| Meat ant | ||||||||||||||||||
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 Meat ant
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| Iridomyrmex purpureus (Smith, 1858) |
Meat ants (Iridomyrmex purpureus), also known as meat-eater ants or gravel ants, are a species of ant belonging to the Iridomyrmex genus. They can be found throughout Australia.
Meat ants live in underground nests of up to 64,000 workers. Many nests may be connected together into a "super-colony" that stretches up to 650 metres (0.4 miles). They like to place gravel, sand, or bits of dead vegetation at the openings to their nests.
Meat ants are omnivorous scavengers and are used by some Australian farmers for carcass removal.[1]
They tend to forage during the day and, being an aggressive species, force other ant species to forage at night. They are aggressive towards meat ants from neighbouring colonies as well and engage in ritual fighting to establish foraging boundaries.
Like other Iridomyrmex species, they engage in a mutualistic relationship with caterpillars of certain butterfly species which produce secretions that meat ants will feed on. In return, they protect the caterpillars from predation.
