Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
will also feed on ant larvae and pupae, dead ants, flies etc. In return, it produces an
attractive secretion like that of the large blue. It has been seen to cling to the bodies
of queen ants, and is probably transported to new nests in this way - an example of
phoresy.
The biology and ecology of British ants have been comprehensively described
recently by M.V.Brian in the New Naturalist volume on ants, so this section concen-
trates on ant-hills. These were once a common feature of our landscape but their agri-
cultural significance in grassland, before the advent of heavy machinery in the 1940s,
has been largely forgotten. They posed a major obstacle to equipment but were also
a valuable 'fertilizer' when spread over the ground. Sir George Cornwall's account
topic for Moccas Deer Park, Hereford, provides an example of the problem they were
considered to be in 1884. Entries for January and March of that year itemized pay-
ments made for 'cutting ant-hills in lawn' and record a total of 4550 ant-hills des-
troyed. Today they are almost banished from our more intensive farmscape and must
be looked for in fragments of chalk downland, isolated pastures, railway cuttings and
other odd neglected corners where old grassland has persisted.
T
ABLE 5
The responses of some grassland plants to mounds of
Lasius flavus
Percentage affinity for ant-hills.
Calcareous grasslands
More abundant on ant-hills
Thyme-leaved sandwort
Arenaria serpyllifolia
100
Wall speedwell
Veronica arvensis
100
Common mouse-ear
Cerastium fontanum
88
Common thyme
Thymus drucei
87
moss
Bryum
spp
80
Comon rockrose
Helianthemum chamaecistus
73
Yellow oat-grass
Trisetum flavescens
69
Squinancy wort
Asperula cynanchica
67
Common bent grass
Agrostis tenuis
66
Hedge bedstraw
Galium mollugo
65
