Nesting of silk-weaving ants
This short note by R.S. Shelford describes the habit of certain ants using their larvae as silk-spinning machines to repair their leaf nests, with particular reference to Oecophylla smaragdina and Polyrhachis dives.
Summary
Shelford reviews the well-documented behaviour of Oecophylla smaragdina, in which worker ants hold separated leaf edges together with their mandibles while other workers carry larvae whose silk filaments are drawn back and forth to weave a repair web across the breach (p. 284). He notes that the same habit has been recorded for Oecophylla longinoda of the Upper Congo and Camponotus senex of Brazil (p. 285).
The note then draws attention to observations by Edu. Jacobson at Semarang, Java, on Polyrhachis dives, whose nest is constructed between the leaves of a Japanese palm and lined with silk partitions. Jacobson observed the same larval-spinning repair method when the nest was broken, suggesting that this behaviour may be more widespread among silk-using Polyrhachis species than previously suspected (p. 285).