![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/yellow-warbler-9651-crop-b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"yellow-warbler-9651-crop-b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn this different crop of the same photo clusters of ants right next to the aphids became apparent. They were in deep shade on the undersides of the leaves so most of them were hard to see until I increased the exposure of the shadows during processing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I believe the aphids were probably being ‘farmed’ by the ants as they cared for and protected them and consumed the honeydew they produce. Ants that do this are sometimes called “dairying ants” because they literally milk the aphids of their honeydew. I believe that it’s probably more than just a coincidence that the ant clusters were so close to the aphids.<\/p>\n
This from Wikipedia if you could use a refresher course on ant\/aphid mutualism.<\/p>\n
Some species of\u00a0ants\u00a0farm aphids, protecting them on the plants where they are feeding, and consuming the honeydew the aphids release from the\u00a0terminations\u00a0of their\u00a0alimentary canals. This is a\u00a0mutualistic relationship, with these dairying ants milking the aphids by stroking them with their\u00a0antennae. Although mutualistic, the feeding behavior of aphids is altered by ant attendance. Aphids attended by ants tend to increase the production of honeydew in smaller drops with a greater concentration of amino acids.<\/em><\/p>\nSome farming ant species gather and store the aphid eggs in their nests over the winter. In the spring, the ants carry the newly hatched aphids back to the plants. Some species of dairying ants manage large herds of aphids that feed on roots of plants in the ant colony. Queens leaving to start a new colony take an aphid egg to found a new herd of underground aphids in the new colony. These farming ants protect the aphids by fighting off aphid predators.<\/em><\/p>\nI don’t know for fact that these ants were farming the aphids but I strongly suspect they were.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Oh, and by the way…<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/yellow-warbler-9236-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"yellow-warbler-9236-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
recently fledged Yellow Warbler chicks are common in the mountains right now. This one, still half-covered with down, could already fly like a champ.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love it when lessons I taught in my biology and zoology classes play out in my photography.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,8,392,395,3486],"tags":[5231,481,5232,145,211,5233,2589,2588],"class_list":["post-87241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-miscellaneous","category-yellow-warbler","tag-ants-farming-aphids","tag-chick","tag-dairying-ants","tag-fledgling","tag-male","tag-mutualism","tag-setophaga-petechia","tag-yellow-warbler"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/yellow-warbler-9236-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mH7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/yellow-warbler-9651-crop-a-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"yellow-warbler-9651-crop-a-ron-dudley\\"")
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