I'm curious, what are these ants doing?

I was admiring my sunflowers as I like to do, and I noticed this scene on a sunflower leaf.

Black ants were scurrying around the leaf, with these small things in the vein of the leaf. I'm guessing they're either larvae being tended to (but those look white and shiny and are kept underground as far as I know) or they're some sort of coocconed prey the ants are feasting on (but as far as I know that's spider behavior, not ants).

I took two close up photos of similar scenes on different leaves. I would love any explanation, just for my own sake!

Thanks

they’re farming those leafhoppers for honeydew.

greg mosser wrote:they’re farming those leafhoppers for honeydew.

Fascinating! Can you tell me more? Do the ants bring them all to these leaves? Are the leafhoppers alive?

they’re alive. when leafhoppers suck plant juices, they poop out a sweet goo called honeydew. in some cases like this, ants who know how this works offer those leafhoppers protection from other insects that might try to eat them in exchange for all that sweet, sweet honeydew. ants do this with aphids too. both aphids and leafhoppers are in the same order of insects, Homoptera.

some of the leafhoppers in your pictures seem to be wingless. i don’t know if that’s something the ants impose on the hoppers, or if it’s a physiological thing the leafhoppers are controlling somehow.

greg mosser wrote:they’re alive. when leafhoppers suck plant juices, they poop out a sweet goo called honeydew. in some cases like this, ants who know how this works offer those leafhoppers protection from other insects that might try to eat them in exchange for all that sweet, sweet honeydew. ants do this with aphids too. both aphids and leafhoppers are in the same order of insects, Homoptera.

Thanks for the explanation, that's incredible! The ants are essentially keeping livestock. I wonder if the missing wings are something the ants do, clip their wings so they stay in one place.

I looked it up and found some other info about this behavior too.

https://steemit.com/macrophotography/@mostly.nature/ants-in-association-with-leafhoppers-a-symbiotic-relationship

I find ants on peonies a lot. The flower produces a sticky nectar that the ants harvest. If the ants don’t carry away the “honey”, the peonies don’t bloom

My sister and BIL are bee farmers, and last year they had a very special batch of honey where the bees were gathering in an area with a lot of ants and aphids,  so the honey was heavily flavoured by honeydew. They gifted us a tub of this honey snd my goodness it is incredible!