babysitter ant

The CSIRO has just published information on 139 new species in Australia which they have now classified. Among them is the babysitter ant which lives in a symbiotic relationship with the caterpillar of the bulloak jewel butterfly, a beautiful butterfly, the second rarest in Australia and in danger of extinction.  It is found in three locations, two of which are in the Southern Brigalow Belt in Queensland, a wide band of wooded grassland that runs between the tropical rainforest of the coast and the semi-arid interior.

The caterpillar hides under the leaf litter of the tree during the day to find protection from the heat and from predators.  But at night each ant picks up a caterpillar and takes it up the tree to the softest leaves where the caterpillar feeds.  In exchange the caterpillar secretes a sweet honeydew for the ants.

Another discovery was a millipede that actually has more than a thousand legs. 1306, to be precise.  It lives underground in southern Western Australia and has a long thread-like body with up to 330 segments.  Before this everyone accepted that the millipede got its name because it had a lot of legs, but not 1000.  The highest number a millipede could manage before this was 750.

The CSIRO still has a lot to do because only a quarter of Australia’s wildlife has been classified.