Species Info General

Other common names include: n/a

This relative newcomer to the Islands took the place by storm not long after its 1997 arrival.  It is a very small ant of yards, beaches and open spaces.  Though it is quite common it is also usually inconspicuous.  It becomes a much more obvious ant when it engages in its nuptial mating flights: this is when thousands of the newly hatched winged queens and males simultaneously emerge from their nests en masse over a large area and fly about in huge numbers in a mating frenzy.  These mating flights can be relatively low, around the height of a human head – and you’ll want to keep your mouth shut if you inadvertently find yourself walking through such a cloud. Golf courses have been known to temporarily close during these nuptial flights due to how annoying it is to accidentally inhale the amorous ants while trying to walk across the greens.

Seaside Rover Ants are extremely fond of the honeydew excreted by aphids and their relatives, with Smith (1936) writing that “The workers must feed largely if not almost exclusively, on honeydew.”  Wolcott (1948) noted that there is “a long list of aphids, scale insects and mealybugs from which it has been observed to obtain honeydew”.  Smith (1936) also wrote that these ants “form rather small colonies in the soil or in rotting logs and stumps, nesting by preference in more open areas”.

Deyrup (2017) made the following interesting comments about this species:

“Brachymyrmex obscurior in Florida is usually found in open sandy areas with sparse vegetation.  It is one of the commonest ants in disturbed areas, including scruffy lawns, edges of mall parking lots, scuffed vegetation by the curbs of sidewalks, drought-stricken highway medians, and among the litter of gum wrappers and cigarette butts along the fences of playgrounds.  It is seldom found in natural upland habitats such as sandhill and Florida scrub.  All this fits the profile of an introduced species with a masochistic preference for the worst kind of disturbed areas, but obscurior is also abundant in beach and other coastal habitats.  These natural habitats are as extreme and highly disturbed as the man-made habitats where obscurior occurs, and it is reasonable to assume that obscurior evolved as a coastal species.”

Though clearly fond of coastal areas, these ants can also be readily found at least as high as 3,000 feet elevation in Upcountry Maui.