Ant follower

[1] The best-known ant-followers are 18 species of antbird in the family Thamnophilidae, but other families of birds may follow ants, including thrushes, chats, ant-tanagers, cuckoos, motmots, and woodcreepers.

Ant followers may be obligate, meaning that they derive most of their diet by following ant swarms, or non-obligate, meaning they derive only some of their diet from this behaviour.

Because E. burchellii is the only regular diurnal army ant specialised and regular ant-followers mostly occur in its Neotropical range, but Afrotropical birds do follow driver ants in the genus Dorylus.

However experiments where ant followers were excluded have shown that the foraging success of the army ants was 30% lower when the birds were present, suggesting that the birds' relationship was in fact parasitic.

[3] This has resulted in a number of behaviours by the ants in order to reduce kleptoparasitism, including hiding of secured prey in the leaf litter and caching of food on trails.