Banded sugar ant meat ants, which have been observed blocking banded sugar ant nesting holes with pebbles and soil to prevent them from leaving their nest during the early hours of the day. The ants counter this by preventing meat ants from leaving their nest by blocking their nesting holes with debris, a behaviour known as nest-plugging. If meat ant nests are encroached by trees or other shade, banded sugar ants may invade and take over the nest, since the health of the colony may deteriorate from overshadowing. Members of an affected meat ant colony later move to a nearby satellite nest that
Longhorn crazy ant research station Biosphere 2 in the Arizona Desert, no particular ant species was dominant. By 1996, the longhorn crazy ant had virtually replaced all the other ant species. It fed almost exclusively on the honeydew secreted by the large numbers of scale insects and mealybugs present, and other invertebrates were greatly diminished. The ones that remained were either well armoured, such as millipedes and woodlice, or were tiny and lived underground, such as springtails and mites. The inquiline wingless ant cricket ("Myrmecophilus americanus") is often found living in the nest of the longhorn crazy ant and is kleptoparasitic on it,