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We have seen that by many species of plant-lice, scale-insects, and leaf-hoppers, a honey-like fluid is secreted that attracts ants to attend upon them. In many of the Homoptera, this secretion only amounts to a white powder covering the body, as in some of the Fulgoridae. In others it is more abundant, and it reaches its extreme limit in a species of Phenax that I found at Santo Domingo.
Nighthawks also eat grasshoppers, potato-beetles, cucumber-beetles, boll-weevils, leaf-hoppers, and numerous gnats and mosquitoes. Surely this splendid representative of the Goatsucker family deserves the gratitude of all American citizens. Among the branches of certain of our fruit trees we sometimes see large webs which have been made by the tent caterpillars.
In Central America, Belt has described how the Leaf-hoppers are milked for their honey by various species of Ants, and also by a Wasp. He considered that some species of Leaf-hopper would be exterminated if it were not for the protection they received from Ants. Naturalist in Nicaragua, 1888, pp. 227-230. An example is quoted which shows still greater intelligence and foresight in Ants.
If the facts I have described are sufficient to show that some plants are benefited by supplying ants with honey from glands on their leaves and flower-buds, I shall not have much difficulty in proving that many plant-lice, scale-insects, and leaf-hoppers, that also attract ants by furnishing them with honey-like food, are, similarly benefited. The aphides are the principal ant-cows of Europe.
The action was so quick that I could not determine whether it struck with its fore-feet or its jaws, but I think it was with the feet. I often saw a wasp trying to clear a leaf from ants that were already in full possession of a cluster of leaf-hoppers. It would sometimes have to strike three or four times at an ant before it made it quit its hold and fall.
The ant that is attacked is a very cowardly species, and never shows fight. I often found it running about sipping at the glands of leaves, or milking aphides, leaf-hoppers, or scale-insects that it found unattended by other ants. On the approach of another, though of a much smaller species, it would immediately run away.
The locusts and caterpillars, the army-worms and cutworms are the best known, but the tiny leaf-hoppers, which spring up at every step as we walk across the path or lawn, and the web-worms and grass-worms and grubs which work about the roots of the plants all do their part in lowering the production.
The papaw trees growing in my garden were infested by a small brown species of Membracis one of the leaf-hoppers that laid its eggs in a cottony-like nest by the side of the ribs on the under part of the leaves. The hopper would stand covering the nest until the young were hatched.
The latter do not sting, but they attack and bite the hand if the young hoppers are interfered with. These leaf-hoppers are, when young, so soft-bodied and sluggish in their movements, and there are so many enemies ready to prey upon them, that I imagine that in the tropics many species would be exterminated if it were not for the protection of the ants.
The wasp stroked the young hoppers, and sipped up the honey when it was exuded, just like the ants. When an ant came up to a cluster of leaf-hoppers attended by a wasp, the latter would not attempt to grapple with its rival on the leaf, but would fly off and hover over the ant; then when its little foe was well exposed, it would dart at it and strike it to the ground.
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