【Unmounted Specimen】 Drifter Ant Species Driver Ant Dorylus sp. Mantis

Scientific Name: Dorylus sp.

Japanese Names: Sasurai-ari / Driver ant / Sausage ant
English Names: driver ants, safari ants, or siafu


Dorylus fulvus currently has 11 subspecies and 7 junior synonyms. These taxa were described between the 1800s and early 1900s, and although the synonyms were proposed in the early 1900s, there has been little taxonomic review since then. 11 subspecies.
The males of driver ants are sometimes called sausage flies (a term also applied to the males of the genus Dorylus in the New World) due to their sausage-shaped swollen abdomens, and are among the largest ant species in terms of morphology, initially thought to belong to a different species. Males leave the colony shortly after hatching, but upon reaching sexual maturity, they are attracted to the scent trails left by columns of siafu. When a driver ant colony encounters a male, they tear off its wings and carry it back to the nest to mate with a newly hatched queen. Like most ant species, the male dies shortly thereafter. Driver ant queens are polygamous, and in some of the larger colony species, young queens must mate with 10-20 males before they can gather enough sperm for reproduction. Once the queen is ready, about half of the worker ants in the colony leave with her to establish a new colony. Driver ant queens are the largest ants on Earth and are the most prolific egg-layers among insects, laying millions of eggs per month.
Several species in this genus raid termite nests, paralyzing or killing them and carrying them back to their nests.
Driver ant species colonies have only one queen. If the queen dies, the surviving workers will attempt to join another colony, but if two colonies of the same driver ant species meet, they will usually change their marching direction to avoid conflict.

Please note that we cannot offer a guarantee against downgrading due to transportation.
We will ship the pictured male specimen collected on October 4, 2021, from an altitude of 1422m in the Jabal al Oahr Mountains, 8km SE of Al Reeth village, Ar Rayth Governorate, Jizan Province, Saudi Arabia. Coordinates are provided.