strigilator
English
Noun
strigilator (plural strigilators)
- (zoology) Any of various myrmecophiles that feed on the oily secretions on the bodies of ants.
- 1927, Horace St. John Kelly Donisthorpe, The guests of British ants: their habits and life-histories:
- These little crickets belong to a group of Synoeketes which Wheeler has called Strigilators. They lick the surfaces of ants and seem to feed very largely, if not exclusively, on the cutaneous secretions and the thin coating of saliva with which ants cover one another.
- 1928, Auguste Henri Forel, The Social World of the Ants Compared with that of Man:
- The Myrmecophila are true strigilators. They are perpetually licking the oily secretions on the bodies and limbs of their ants, which they caress the while with their antennæ.
- 1942, Edward Oliver Essig, College Entomology, page 672:
- Synoëketes — guests unnoticed or tolerated because the ants are unable to deal effectively with them. They are mostly harmless scavengers or nuisances or strigilators and are classified by Wheeler as being: a. Neutrals — scavengers that are not mimetic: mites; collembolens; staphylinid, trichopterygid, chrysomelid, and scarabæid beetles; phorid and syrphid flies; and caterpillars of certain microlepidopterans.
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Related terms
- strigil