White-Footed Ant

Technomyrmex albipes

Foraging Characteristics: Many small to medium sized black ants foraging in tight trails that sometimes branch. Foragers on walls and vegetation. Foragers tend honeydew-producing insects as well as visit flowers. When disturbed, ants will run in small erratic circles (more slowly than crazy ants) but will not turn gasters over their bodies (as acrobat ants will). Blacker and stouter than Argentine ants, but similar in size and foraging behavior. Body sizes slightly variable, but no obvious size differences.

Detailed Description: Workers 2.5-3 mm (1/10-1/8 in) in length, black to blackish brown in color. Tarsi (“feet”) and antennal flagella yellowish white.  Head as long as wide. Five abdominal segments visible from above. One petiolar node. No sting.  Few erect hairs. Twelve-segmented antennae. Subfamily Dolichoderinae.

Most Common Complaints: Many foragers on outside walls and/or inside. Foragers on vegetation.  Small gnat-like alates found dead around lights or windows on summer mornings. Piles of dead ants on windowsills, in sinks, corners, etc. Control by dilute sugar baits, chemical barriers to prevent structural access, and spraying landscape to control aphids and scales and to contaminate nest sites.

Nest Sites & Characteristics: Nests are usually outside, numerous, and often arboreal (in trees or shrubs, or in spaces above the ground in structures).  Nests can be found in hollow branches, and in any small spaces that might accommodate a pocket of ants, including under potted plants, in leaf litter, in the bases of palm fronds or banana leaves, between cut logs, in yard toys, in old termite galleries, under bark, behind hurricane shutter brackets, under fascia boards, and between bricks.  Nests are readily abandoned and relocated when disturbed. Colonies can have many hundreds of queens, spread out among many subcolonies. Wingless reproductives cannot easily be distinguished from workers. Colony reproduction is by swarming or budding.

Flight Season: Alates leave colonies from summer rainy season until mid-winter in South Florida.  In Japan, swarming is much shorter in duration (late May to mid June, which may be reflected in US population when it reaches its northern limits).  Swarms occur late afternoon 4-5 feet off the ground in large clouds of tiny gnat-like alates that move with the breeze.  Males are attracted to lights at night, and many dead alates can be found under lights that have been left on overnight, or illuminated in early morning hours.

Diet: Honeydew from aphids and scale insects, and nectar from flowers and extrafloral nectaries or sweets indoors. Protein such as dead animals, pet food and table scraps. Larvae fed by trophic eggs.

Distribution: Currently confirmed in Brevard, Broward, Collier, Dade, Hendry, Lee, Martin, Monroe, Orange, Palm Beach, Polk, St. Lucie Sarasota, and Seminole Counties. Will likely saturate urban and suburban habitats in central and south Florida.

Origin: Asia