SalientGate What Interests You?

Antlions

Posted Friday, Jan 29, 2010

There are about 2,000 species of antlions and the term "antlion" refers to it's larval form. There is no widely used name for the antlion's adult form but sometimes they are called doodlebugs because of the trails their wings leave in the sand as they look for places to build traps, and sometimes called sand dragons.

The life cycle of an antlion begins when the female lays an egg in the sand as it grows into a larva. The larval form of an antlion is a ferocious appearing creature with a plump abdomen, a thorax bearing three sets of walking legs, and a flattened head which bears an enormous pair of sickle-like jaws (compared to the rest of it's body), with several sharp, hollow projections for injecting their prey with venom.

When ants and other small insects wander to close to the antlion's sand pit the soil slips and the insects slide straight in to the large, piercing mandibles of the antlion. If the prey doesn't fully slide in to the pit and tries to get out, the antlion will toss sand at it causing the captive to loose it's grip.

As the antlion starts to mature it will create a globular cacoon of sand stuck together with silk a few centimeters beneath the surface. It will reemerge as a fully matured adult and fly off to find a mate.

The adult antlion has two pairs of long, narrow wings and closely resemble dragonflies or damselflies. They are not very good fliers and are usually only found flying around at night searching for a mate and are thus rarely seen.

The average lifespan of an antlion is 20 to 25 days but some have been observed to live up to 45 days.

How to Link to this Page

If you would like to link to this page from your website, simply cut and paste the following code to your website.

It will appear on your website like this:
Antlions