Oecophylla Smaragdina, Semut Agresif Sarat Manfaat

Oecophylla smaragdina is a fascinating species of formicine ants, found in Asia and Australia. Their abundance as well as their aggressive and territorial behaviors are some of the interesting facts of the ants. They are also capable in using their own larvae as shuttle to weave leaves into nests in many species of plants. Weaver ants play important roles to human as food source, animal feed and biological control agents for many insect pests in the orchards. Moreover, weaver ant silks could be a potential biomaterial for medical and biotechnological applications. Unfortunately, destructive harvesting of weaver ant brood, especially in Java, has decreased the nest numbers to become rare. However, mass rearing of weaver ant colonies is now possible so the ants can be protected from unsustainable harvesting. Fauna Indonesia, Vol. 13, No. 2. Hal. 9-16