eusocial
Eusociality (from Greek εὖ ''eu'' "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping gen ...
insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...
s of the
family
Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...
Formicidae and, along with the related
wasp
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. ...
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...
period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22,000
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
have been classified. They are easily identified by their geniculate (elbowed) antennae and the distinctive node-like structure that forms their slender waists.
Ants form
colonies
In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...
that range in size from a few dozen predatory individuals living in small natural cavities to highly organised colonies that may occupy large territories and consist of millions of individuals. Larger colonies consist of various castes of sterile, wingless females, most of which are workers (ergates), as well as soldiers (dinergates) and other specialised groups. Nearly all ant colonies also have some fertile males called "drones" and one or more fertile females called "
queens
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
" (
gyne
The gyne (, from Greek γυνή, "woman") is the primary reproductive female caste of social insects (especially ants, wasps, and bees of order Hymenoptera, as well as termites). Gynes are those destined to become queens, whereas female workers ...
s). The colonies are described as
superorganism
A superorganism or supraorganism is a group of synergetically interacting organisms of the same species. A community of synergetically interacting organisms of different species is called a holobiont.
Concept
The term superorganism is used m ...
s because the ants appear to operate as a unified entity, collectively working together to support the colony.
Ants have colonised almost every landmass on
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
. The only places lacking
indigenous
Indigenous may refer to:
*Indigenous peoples
*Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention
*Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band
*Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...
ants are
Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...
and a few remote or inhospitable islands. Ants thrive in moist tropical ecosystems and may exceed the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals. Their success in so many environments has been attributed to their social organisation and their ability to modify habitats, tap resources, and defend themselves. Their long
co-evolution
In biology, coevolution occurs when two or more species reciprocally affect each other's evolution through the process of natural selection. The term sometimes is used for two traits in the same species affecting each other's evolution, as well ...
with other species has led to
mimetic
Mimesis (; grc, μίμησις, ''mīmēsis'') is a term used in literary criticism and philosophy that carries a wide range of meanings, including '' imitatio'', imitation, nonsensuous similarity, receptivity, representation, mimicry, the ...
,
commensal
Commensalism is a long-term biological interaction (symbiosis) in which members of one species gain benefits while those of the other species neither benefit nor are harmed. This is in contrast with mutualism, in which both organisms benefit fro ...
,
parasitic
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson ha ...
, and mutualistic relationships.
Ant societies have division of labour, communication between individuals, and an ability to solve complex problems. These parallels with human societies have long been an inspiration and subject of study. Many human cultures make use of ants in cuisine, medication, and rites. Some species are valued in their role as biological pest control agents. Their ability to exploit resources may bring ants into conflict with humans, however, as they can damage crops and invade buildings. Some species, such as the
red imported fire ant
The red imported fire ant (''Solenopsis invicta''), also known as the fire ant or RIFA, is a species of ant native to South America. A member of the genus '' Solenopsis'' in the subfamily Myrmicinae, it was described by Swiss entomologist Fel ...
(''Solenopsis invicta'') of South America, are regarded as invasive species in other parts of the world, establishing themselves in areas where they have been introduced accidentally.
Etymology
The word ''ant'' and the chiefly dialectal form ''emmet'' come from ', ' of
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
, which come from ' of
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
; these are all related to
Low Saxon
Low Saxon, also known as West Low German ( nds, Nedersassisch, Nedersaksies; nl, Nedersaksisch) are a group of Low German dialects spoken in parts of the Netherlands, northwestern Germany and southern Denmark (in North Schleswig by parts of th ...
', ' and varieties (
Old Saxon
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It ...
') and to
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
' (
Old High German
Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050.
There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old High ...
'). All of these words come from West Germanic ''*'', and the original meaning of the word was "the biter" (from
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bran ...
', "off, away" + ' "cut"). The family name Formicidae is derived from the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
' ("ant") from which the words in other
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
, such as the Portuguese ', Italian ', Spanish ', Romanian ', and French ' are derived. It has been hypothesised that a
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...
word *morwi- was used, cf.
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
''vamrah'',
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
Old Irish
Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writt ...
''moirb'',
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...
''maurr'',
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
''mier'',
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
''myra'',
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
''myre'',
Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects whose ancestor was Old Dutch. It was spoken and written between 1150 and 1500. Until the advent of Modern Dutch after 1500 or c. 1550, there was no overarc ...
''miere'',
Crimean Gothic
Crimean Gothic was an East Germanic language spoken by the Crimean Goths in some isolated locations in Crimea until the late 18th century.
Attestation
The existence of a Germanic dialect in Crimea is noted in a number of sources from the 9th ce ...
'' miera''.
Taxonomy and evolution
The family Formicidae belongs to the order Hymenoptera, which also includes
sawflies
Sawflies are the insects of the suborder Symphyta within the order Hymenoptera, alongside ants, bees, and wasps. The common name comes from the saw-like appearance of the ovipositor, which the females use to cut into the plants where they lay ...
wasp
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. ...
s. Ants evolved from a lineage within the stinging wasps, and a 2013 study suggests that they are a sister group of the
Apoidea
The superfamily Apoidea is a major group within the Hymenoptera, which includes two traditionally recognized lineages, the " sphecoid" wasps, and the bees. Molecular phylogeny demonstrates that the bees arose from within the traditional " Crabroni ...
. In 1966,
E. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, entomologist and writer. According to David Attenborough, Wilson was the world's leading expert in his specialty of myrmecology, the study of an ...
and his colleagues identified the
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
remains of an ant (''
Sphecomyrma
''Sphecomyrma'' is an extinct genus of ants which existed in the Cretaceous approximately 79 to 92 million years ago. The first specimens were collected in 1966, found embedded in amber which had been exposed in the cliffs of Cliffwood, New Jer ...
'') that lived in the
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...
period. The specimen, trapped in amber
dating
Dating is a stage of romantic relationships in which two individuals engage in an activity together, most often with the intention of evaluating each other's suitability as a partner in a future intimate relationship. It falls into the categor ...
back to around 92 million years ago, has features found in some wasps, but not found in modern ants. The oldest fossils of ants date to the mid-Cretaceous, around 100 million years ago, which belong to extinct stem-groups such as the
Haidomyrmecinae
Haidomyrmecinae, occasionally called Hell ants, are an extinct subfamily of ants (Formicidae) known from Cretaceous fossils found in ambers of North America, Europe, and Asia, spanning the late Albian to Campanian, around 100 to 79 million years ...
,
Sphecomyrminae
Sphecomyrminae is an extinct subfamily of ants in family Formicidae known from a series of Cretaceous fossils found in North America, Europe, and Asia. Sphecomyrminae contains eight genera, divided into two tribes Sphecomyrmini and Zigrasimec ...
and
Zigrasimeciinae
Zigrasimeciinae is a subfamily of ants, known from the Cretaceous period, originally named as the tribe Zigrasimeciini within the subfamily Sphecomyrminae by Borysenko, 2017, it was elevated to full subfamily in 2020. It contains three described ...
, with modern ant subfamilies appearing towards the end of the Cretaceous around 80-70 million years ago. Ants diversified and assumed ecological dominance around 60 million years ago. Some groups, such as the
Leptanillinae
Leptanillinae is a subfamily of ants. They are further divided into the tribes Anomalomyrmini and Leptanillini.
In all Leptanillini, the larvae feed their hemolymph
Hemolymph, or haemolymph, is a fluid, analogous to the blood in vertebrat ...
and
Martialinae
''Martialis heureka'' is a species of ant discovered in 2000 from the Amazon rainforest near Manaus, Brazil. It was described as a new species and placed as the sole member of a new subfamily, Martialinae. The generic name means "from Mars" ...
, are suggested to have diversified from early primitive ants that were likely to have been predators underneath the surface of the soil.
During the Cretaceous period, a few species of primitive ants ranged widely on the Laurasian supercontinent (the Northern Hemisphere). Their representation in the fossil record is poor, in comparison to the populations of other insects, representing only about 1% of fossil evidence of insects in the era. Ants became dominant after
adaptive radiation
In evolutionary biology, adaptive radiation is a process in which organisms diversify rapidly from an ancestral species into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a change in the environment makes new resources available, alters biotic int ...
at the beginning of the
Paleogene period
The Paleogene ( ; also spelled Palaeogene or Palæogene; informally Lower Tertiary or Early Tertiary) is a geologic period and system that spans 43 million years from the end of the Cretaceous Period million years ago ( Mya) to the beginning o ...
Miocene
The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...
, ants had come to represent 20–40% of all insects found in major fossil deposits. Of the species that lived in the
Eocene
The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', " ...
epoch, around one in 10 genera survive to the present. Genera surviving today comprise 56% of the genera in
Baltic amber
The Baltic region is home to the largest known deposit of amber, called Baltic amber or succinite. It was produced sometime during the Eocene epoch, but exactly when is controversial. It has been estimated that these forests created more than ...
fossils (early Oligocene), and 92% of the genera in
Dominican amber
Dominican amber is amber from the Dominican Republic derived from resin of the extinct tree '' Hymenaea protera''.
Dominican amber differentiates itself from Baltic amber by being nearly always transparent, and it has a higher number of fossil inc ...
fossils (apparently early Miocene).Hölldobler & Wilson (1990), pp. 23–24
Termite
Termites are small insects that live in colonies and have distinct castes (eusocial) and feed on wood or other dead plant matter. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blatto ...
s live in colonies and are sometimes called ‘white ants’, but termites are not ants. They are the sub-order
Isoptera
Termites are small insects that live in colonies and have distinct castes (eusocial) and feed on wood or other dead plant matter. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blattod ...
, and together with
cockroach
Cockroaches (or roaches) are a Paraphyly, paraphyletic group of insects belonging to Blattodea, containing all members of the group except termites. About 30 cockroach species out of 4,600 are associated with human habitats. Some species are we ...
es they form the order
Blattodea
Blattodea is an order of insects that contains cockroaches and termites. Formerly, termites were considered a separate order, Isoptera, but genetic and molecular evidence suggests they evolved from within the cockroach lineage, cladistically ...
. Blattodeans are related to
mantid
Mantidae is one of the largest families in the order of praying mantises, based on the type species ''Mantis religiosa''; however, most genera are tropical or subtropical. Historically, this was the only family in the order, and many reference ...
s,
crickets
Crickets are orthopteran insects which are related to bush crickets, and, more distantly, to grasshoppers. In older literature, such as Imms,Imms AD, rev. Richards OW & Davies RG (1970) ''A General Textbook of Entomology'' 9th Ed. Methuen 8 ...
, and other winged insects that do not undergo full metamorphosis. Like ants, termites are
eusocial
Eusociality (from Greek εὖ ''eu'' "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping gen ...
, with sterile workers, but they differ greatly in the genetics of reproduction. The similarity of their social structure to that of ants is attributed to
convergent evolution
Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar features in species of different periods or epochs in time. Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last com ...
. Velvet ants look like large ants, but are wingless female
wasp
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. ...
Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...
, and only a few large islands, such as
Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland i ...
,
Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
, parts of
Polynesia
Polynesia () "many" and νῆσος () "island"), to, Polinisia; mi, Porinihia; haw, Polenekia; fj, Polinisia; sm, Polenisia; rar, Porinetia; ty, Pōrīnetia; tvl, Polenisia; tkl, Polenihia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of ...
and the Hawaiian Islands lack native ant species. Ants occupy a wide range of
ecological niche
In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition.
Three variants of ecological niche are described by
It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (for ...
s and exploit many different food resources as direct or indirect herbivores, predators and scavengers. Most ant species are omnivorous generalists, but a few are specialist feeders. There is considerable variation in ant abundance across habitats, peaking in the moist tropics to nearly six times that found in less suitable habitats. Their ecological dominance has been examined primarily using estimates of their biomass: myrmecologist
E. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, entomologist and writer. According to David Attenborough, Wilson was the world's leading expert in his specialty of myrmecology, the study of an ...
had estimated in 2009 that at any one time the total number of ants was between one and ten
quadrillion
Two naming scales for large numbers have been used in English and other European languages since the early modern era: the long and short scales. Most English variants use the short scale today, but the long scale remains dominant in many non-E ...
(
short scale
The long and short scales are two of several naming systems for integer powers of ten which use some of the same terms for different magnitudes.
For whole numbers smaller than 1,000,000,000 (109), such as one thousand or one million, the t ...
) (i.e., between 1015 and 1016) and using this estimate he had suggested that the total biomass of all the ants in the world was approximately equal to the total biomass of the entire
human
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, cultu ...
race. More careful estimates made in 2022 which take into account regional variations puts the global ant contribution at 12 megatons of dry carbon, which is about 20% of the total human contribution, but greater than that of the wild birds and mammals combined. This study also puts a conservative estimate of the ants at about 20 × 1015 (20 quadrillion).
Ants range in size from ,Hölldobler & Wilson (1990), p. 589 the largest species being the fossil '' Titanomyrma giganteum'', the queen of which was long with a wingspan of . Ants vary in colour; most ants are red or black, but a few species are green and some tropical species have a metallic
lustre
Lustre or Luster may refer to:
Places
* Luster, Norway, a municipality in Vestlandet, Norway
** Luster (village), a village in the municipality of Luster
* Lustre, Montana, an unincorporated community in the United States
Entertainment
* '' ...
. More than 13,800 species are currently knownAntWeb /ref> (with upper estimates of the potential existence of about 22,000; see the article List of ant genera), with the greatest diversity in the tropics. Taxonomic studies continue to resolve the classification and systematics of ants. Online databases of ant species, includin AntWeb and th Hymenoptera Name Server help to keep track of the known and newly described species. The relative ease with which ants may be sampled and studied in
ecosystem
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...
biodiversity
Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...
studies.
Morphology
Ants are distinct in their
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
from other insects in having geniculate (elbowed) antennae,
metapleural gland
Metapleural glands (also called metasternal or metathoracic glands) are secretory glands that are unique to ants and basal in the evolutionary history of ants. They are responsible for the production of an antibiotic fluid that then collects in a ...
s, and a strong constriction of their second
abdominal
The abdomen (colloquially called the belly, tummy, midriff, tucky or stomach) is the part of the body between the thorax (chest) and pelvis, in humans and in other vertebrates. The abdomen is the front part of the abdominal segment of the torso ...
mesosoma
The mesosoma is the middle part of the body, or tagma, of arthropods whose body is composed of three parts, the other two being the prosoma and the metasoma. It bears the legs, and, in the case of winged insects, the wings.
In hymenopterans of ...
, and
metasoma
The metasoma is the posterior part of the body, or tagma, of arthropods whose body is composed of three parts, the other two being the prosoma and the mesosoma. In insects, it contains most of the digestive tract, respiratory system, and circul ...
are the three distinct body segments (formally tagmata). The petiole forms a narrow waist between their mesosoma (
thorax
The thorax or chest is a part of the anatomy of humans, mammals, and other tetrapod animals located between the neck and the abdomen. In insects, crustaceans, and the extinct trilobites, the thorax is one of the three main divisions of the cre ...
plus the first abdominal segment, which is fused to it) and gaster (abdomen less the abdominal segments in the petiole). The petiole may be formed by one or two nodes (the second alone, or the second and third abdominal segments). Tergosternal fusion, when the tergite and sternite of a segment fuse together, can occur partly or fully on the second, third and fourth abdominal segment and is used in identification. Fourth abdominal tergosternal fusion was formerly used as character that defined the poneromorph subfamilies, Ponerinae and relatives within their clade, but this is no longer considered a synapomorphic character.
Like other arthropods, ants have an
exoskeleton
An exoskeleton (from Greek ''éxō'' "outer" and ''skeletós'' "skeleton") is an external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to an internal skeleton (endoskeleton) in for example, a human. In usage, some of the ...
, an external covering that provides a protective casing around the body and a point of attachment for muscles, in contrast to the internal skeletons of humans and other
vertebrate
Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with c ...
oxygen
Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as ...
and other gases, such as
carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide ( chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is trans ...
, pass through their exoskeleton via tiny valves called
spiracle Spiracle or spiraculum may refer to:
* Spiracle (arthropods), opening in the exoskeletons of some arthropods
* Spiracle (vertebrates), openings on the surface of some vertebrates
* Spiraculum, a genus of land snails in family Cyclophoridae
Cycl ...
s. Insects also lack closed
blood vessel
The blood vessels are the components of the circulatory system that transport blood throughout the human body. These vessels transport blood cells, nutrients, and oxygen to the tissues of the body. They also take waste and carbon dioxide away ...
s; instead, they have a long, thin, perforated tube along the top of the body (called the "
dorsal aorta
The dorsal aortae are paired (left and right) embryological vessels which progress to form the descending aorta. The paired dorsal aortae arise from aortic arches that in turn arise from the aortic sac.
The primary dorsal aorta is located deep ...
") that functions like a heart, and pumps
haemolymph
Hemolymph, or haemolymph, is a fluid, analogous to the blood in vertebrates, that circulates in the interior of the arthropod (invertebrate) body, remaining in direct contact with the animal's tissues. It is composed of a fluid plasma in which ...
toward the head, thus driving the circulation of the internal fluids. The
nervous system
In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes ...
consists of a
ventral nerve cord
The ventral nerve cord is a major structure of the invertebrate central nervous system. It is the functional equivalent of the vertebrate spinal cord. The ventral nerve cord coordinates neural signaling from the brain to the body and vice versa, i ...
that runs the length of the body, with several ganglia and branches along the way reaching into the extremities of the appendages.Borror, Triplehorn & Delong (1989), pp. 24–71
Head
An ant's head contains many
sensory organs
A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the central nervous system rec ...
. Like most insects, ants have
compound eye
A compound eye is a visual organ found in arthropods such as insects and crustaceans. It may consist of thousands of ommatidia, which are tiny independent photoreception units that consist of a cornea, lens, and photoreceptor cells which disti ...
s made from numerous tiny lenses attached together. Ant eyes are good for acute movement detection, but do not offer a high
resolution
Resolution(s) may refer to:
Common meanings
* Resolution (debate), the statement which is debated in policy debate
* Resolution (law), a written motion adopted by a deliberative body
* New Year's resolution, a commitment that an individual mak ...
image. They also have three small
ocelli
A simple eye (sometimes called a pigment pit) refers to a form of eye or an optical arrangement composed of a single lens and without an elaborate retina such as occurs in most vertebrates. In this sense "simple eye" is distinct from a multi-l ...
(simple eyes) on the top of the head that detect light levels and polarization. Compared to
vertebrate
Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with c ...
s, ants tend to have blurrier eyesight, particularly in smaller species, and a few subterranean taxa are completely blind. However, some ants, such as Australia's bulldog ant, have excellent vision and are capable of discriminating the distance and size of objects moving nearly a
meter
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...
away.
Two antennae ("feelers") are attached to the head; these organs detect chemicals, air currents, and
vibration
Vibration is a mechanical phenomenon whereby oscillations occur about an equilibrium point. The word comes from Latin ''vibrationem'' ("shaking, brandishing"). The oscillations may be periodic, such as the motion of a pendulum—or random, su ...
s; they also are used to transmit and receive signals through touch. The head has two strong jaws, the
mandibles
In anatomy, the mandible, lower jaw or jawbone is the largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton. It forms the lower jaw and holds the lower teeth in place. The mandible sits beneath the maxilla. It is the only movable bone ...
, used to carry food, manipulate objects, construct nests, and for defence. In some species, a small pocket (infrabuccal chamber) inside the mouth stores food, so it may be passed to other ants or their larvae.
Mesosoma
Both the
legs
A leg is a weight-bearing and locomotive anatomical structure, usually having a columnar shape. During locomotion, legs function as "extensible struts". The combination of movements at all joints can be modeled as a single, linear element ...
and
wings
A wing is a type of fin that produces lift while moving through air or some other fluid. Accordingly, wings have streamlined cross-sections that are subject to aerodynamic forces and act as airfoils. A wing's aerodynamic efficiency is expre ...
of the ant are attached to the
mesosoma
The mesosoma is the middle part of the body, or tagma, of arthropods whose body is composed of three parts, the other two being the prosoma and the metasoma. It bears the legs, and, in the case of winged insects, the wings.
In hymenopterans of ...
("thorax"). The legs terminate in a hooked
claw
A claw is a curved, pointed appendage found at the end of a toe or finger in most amniotes (mammals, reptiles, birds). Some invertebrates such as beetles and spiders have somewhat similar fine, hooked structures at the end of the leg or tarsus ...
which allows them to hook on and climb surfaces. Only reproductive ants (
queens
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
and males) have wings. Queens shed their wings after the
nuptial flight
Nuptial flight is an important phase in the reproduction of most ant, termite, and some bee species. It is also observed in some fly species, such as '' Rhamphomyia longicauda''.
During the flight, virgin queens mate with males and then land t ...
, leaving visible stubs, a distinguishing feature of queens. In a few species, wingless queens (
ergatoid
An ergatoid (from Greek '' ergat-'', "worker" + ''-oid'', "like") is a permanently wingless reproductive adult ant or termite. The similar but somewhat ambiguous term ergatogyne refers to any intermediate form between workers and standard gynes. E ...
s) and males occur.
Metasoma
The
metasoma
The metasoma is the posterior part of the body, or tagma, of arthropods whose body is composed of three parts, the other two being the prosoma and the mesosoma. In insects, it contains most of the digestive tract, respiratory system, and circul ...
(the "abdomen") of the ant houses important internal organs, including those of the reproductive, respiratory (tracheae), and excretory systems. Workers of many species have their egg-laying structures modified into stings that are used for subduing
prey
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill ...
and defending their nests.
Polymorphism
In the colonies of a few ant species, there are physical castes—workers in distinct size-classes, called minor, median, and major ergates. Often, the larger ants have disproportionately larger heads, and correspondingly stronger
mandibles
In anatomy, the mandible, lower jaw or jawbone is the largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton. It forms the lower jaw and holds the lower teeth in place. The mandible sits beneath the maxilla. It is the only movable bone ...
. These are known as macrergates while smaller workers are known as micrergates. Although formally known as dinergates, such individuals are sometimes called "soldier" ants because their stronger mandibles make them more effective in fighting, although they still are workers and their "duties" typically do not vary greatly from the minor or median workers. In a few species, the median workers are absent, creating a sharp divide between the minors and majors. Weaver ants, for example, have a distinct
bimodal
In statistics, a multimodal distribution is a probability distribution with more than one mode. These appear as distinct peaks (local maxima) in the probability density function, as shown in Figures 1 and 2. Categorical, continuous, and d ...
size distribution. Some other species show continuous variation in the size of workers. The smallest and largest workers in ''
Carebara diversa
''Carebara diversa'' (common name East Indian harvesting ant), is a species of Pheidologeton, marauder ant widely distributed throughout Asia.
'' show nearly a 500-fold difference in their dry weights.
Workers cannot mate; however, because of the
haplodiploid sex-determination system
Haplodiploidy is a sex-determination system in which males develop from unfertilized eggs and are haploid, and females develop from fertilized eggs and are diploid. Haplodiploidy is sometimes called arrhenotoky.
Haplodiploidy determines the sex ...
in ants, workers of a number of species can lay unfertilised eggs that become fully fertile, haploid males. The role of workers may change with their age and in some species, such as
honeypot ants
Honeypot ants, also called honey ants, are ants which have specialised workers (repletes, plerergates, or rotunds) that are gorged with food to the point that their abdomens swell enormously. Other ants then extract nourishment from them, through ...
, young workers are fed until their gasters are distended, and act as living food storage vessels. These food storage workers are called ''repletes''. For instance, these replete workers develop in the North American honeypot ant ''
Myrmecocystus mexicanus
''Myrmecocystus mexicanus'' is a species of ant in the genus ''Myrmecocystus'', which is one of the six genera that bear the common name "honey ant" or "honeypot ant", due to curious behavior where some of the workers will swell with liquid food ...
''. Usually the largest workers in the colony develop into repletes; and, if repletes are removed from the colony, other workers become repletes, demonstrating the flexibility of this particular polymorphism. This polymorphism in morphology and behaviour of workers initially was thought to be determined by environmental factors such as nutrition and hormones that led to different developmental paths; however, genetic differences between worker castes have been noted in ''Acromyrmex'' sp. These polymorphisms are caused by relatively small genetic changes; differences in a single gene of ''
Solenopsis invicta
The red imported fire ant (''Solenopsis invicta''), also known as the fire ant or RIFA, is a species of ant native to South America. A member of the genus '' Solenopsis'' in the subfamily Myrmicinae, it was described by Swiss entomologist Fel ...
'' can decide whether the colony will have single or multiple queens. The Australian
jack jumper ant
Jack may refer to:
Places
* Jack, Alabama, US, an unincorporated community
* Jack, Missouri, US, an unincorporated community
* Jack County, Texas, a county in Texas, USA
People and fictional characters
* Jack (given name), a male given name, ...
(''Myrmecia pilosula'') has only a single pair of chromosomes (with the males having just one chromosome as they are haploid), the lowest number known for any animal, making it an interesting subject for studies in the genetics and developmental biology of social insects.
Genome size
Genome size
Genome size is the total amount of DNA contained within one copy of a single complete genome. It is typically measured in terms of mass in picograms (trillionths (10−12) of a gram, abbreviated pg) or less frequently in daltons, or as the total ...
is a fundamental characteristic of an organism. Ants have been found to have tiny genomes, with the evolution of genome size suggested to occur through loss and accumulation of
non-coding
Non-coding DNA (ncDNA) sequences are components of an organism's DNA that do not encode protein sequences. Some non-coding DNA is transcribed into functional non-coding RNA molecules (e.g. transfer RNA, microRNA, piRNA, ribosomal RNA, and regula ...
regions, mainly
transposable element
A transposable element (TE, transposon, or jumping gene) is a nucleic acid sequence in DNA that can change its position within a genome, sometimes creating or reversing mutations and altering the cell's genetic identity and genome size. Transp ...
s, and occasionally by whole genome duplication. This may be related to
colonisation
Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
processes, but further studies are needed to verify this.
Life cycle
The life of an ant starts from an
egg
An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...
; if the egg is fertilised, the progeny will be female diploid, if not, it will be male haploid. Ants develop by
complete metamorphosis
Holometabolism, also called complete metamorphosis, is a form of insect development which includes four life stages: egg, larva, pupa, and imago (or adult). Holometabolism is a synapomorphic trait of all insects in the superorder Endopterygo ...
with the
larva
A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle.
...
stages passing through a
pupa
A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in thei ...
l stage before emerging as an adult. The larva is largely immobile and is fed and cared for by workers. Food is given to the larvae by
trophallaxis
Trophallaxis () is the transfer of food or other fluids among members of a community through mouth-to-mouth ( stomodeal) or anus-to-mouth ( proctodeal) feeding. Along with nutrients, trophallaxis can involve the transfer of molecules such as pher ...
, a process in which an ant regurgitates liquid food held in its
crop
A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. When the plants of the same kind are cultivated at one place on a large scale, it is called a crop. Most crops are cultivated in agriculture or hydropon ...
. This is also how adults share food, stored in the "social stomach". Larvae, especially in the later stages, may also be provided solid food, such as
trophic egg A trophic egg, in most species that produce them, usually is an unfertilised egg because its function is not reproduction but nutrition; in essence it serves as food for offspring hatched from viable eggs. The production of trophic eggs has been ob ...
s, pieces of prey, and seeds brought by workers.
The larvae grow through a series of four or five
moult
In biology, moulting (British English), or molting (American English), also known as sloughing, shedding, or in many invertebrates, ecdysis, is the manner in which an animal routinely casts off a part of its body (often, but not always, an outer ...
s and enter the pupal stage. The pupa has the appendages free and not fused to the body as in a butterfly pupa. The differentiation into queens and workers (which are both female), and different
castes
Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultura ...
of workers, is influenced in some species by the nutrition the larvae obtain. Genetic influences and the control of gene expression by the developmental environment are complex and the determination of caste continues to be a subject of research. Winged male ants, called drones (termed "aner" in old literature), emerge from pupae along with the usually winged breeding females. Some species, such as
army ant
The name army ant (or legionary ant or ''marabunta'') is applied to over 200 ant species in different lineages. Because of their aggressive predatory foraging groups, known as "raids", a huge number of ants forage simultaneously over a limi ...
s, have wingless queens. Larvae and pupae need to be kept at fairly constant temperatures to ensure proper development, and so often are moved around among the various brood chambers within the colony.
A new ergate spends the first few days of its adult life caring for the queen and young. She then graduates to digging and other nest work, and later to defending the nest and foraging. These changes are sometimes fairly sudden, and define what are called temporal castes. An explanation for the sequence is suggested by the high casualties involved in foraging, making it an acceptable risk only for ants who are older and are likely to die soon of natural causes.
Ant colonies can be long-lived. The queens can live for up to 30 years, and workers live from 1 to 3 years. Males, however, are more transitory, being quite short-lived and surviving for only a few weeks. Ant queens are estimated to live 100 times as long as solitary insects of a similar size.
Ants are active all year long in the tropics, but, in cooler regions, they survive the winter in a state of dormancy known as hibernation. The forms of inactivity are varied and some temperate species have larvae going into the inactive state (
diapause
In animal dormancy, diapause is the delay in development in response to regular and recurring periods of adverse environmental conditions.Tauber, M.J., Tauber, C.A., Masaki, S. (1986) ''Seasonal Adaptations of Insects''. Oxford University Press I ...
), while in others, the adults alone pass the winter in a state of reduced activity.
Reproduction
A wide range of reproductive strategies have been noted in ant species. Females of many species are known to be capable of reproducing asexually through
thelytokous parthenogenesis
Thelytoky (from the Greek ''thēlys'' "female" and ''tokos'' "birth") is a type of parthenogenesis in which females are produced from unfertilized eggs, as for example in aphids. Thelytokous parthenogenesis is rare among animals and reported in a ...
. Secretions from the male accessory glands in some species can plug the female genital opening and prevent females from re-mating. Most ant species have a system in which only the queen and breeding females have the ability to mate. Contrary to popular belief, some ant nests have multiple queens, while others may exist without queens. Workers with the ability to reproduce are called " gamergates" and colonies that lack queens are then called gamergate colonies; colonies with queens are said to be queen-right.
Drones can also mate with existing queens by entering a foreign colony, such as in
army ant
The name army ant (or legionary ant or ''marabunta'') is applied to over 200 ant species in different lineages. Because of their aggressive predatory foraging groups, known as "raids", a huge number of ants forage simultaneously over a limi ...
s. When the drone is initially attacked by the workers, it releases a mating
pheromone
A pheromone () is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting like hormones outside the body of the secreting individual, to affect the behavio ...
. If recognized as a mate, it will be carried to the queen to mate. Males may also patrol the nest and fight others by grabbing them with their mandibles, piercing their
exoskeleton
An exoskeleton (from Greek ''éxō'' "outer" and ''skeletós'' "skeleton") is an external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to an internal skeleton (endoskeleton) in for example, a human. In usage, some of the ...
and then marking them with a pheromone. The marked male is interpreted as an invader by worker ants and is killed.
Most ants are
univoltine
Voltinism is a term used in biology to indicate the number of broods or generations of an organism in a year. The term is most often applied to insects, and is particularly in use in sericulture, where silkworm varieties vary in their voltinism.
...
, producing a new generation each year. During the species-specific breeding period, winged females and winged males, known to
entomologists
Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...
as
alate
Alate (Latin ''ālātus'', from ''āla'' (“wing”)) is an adjective and noun used in entomology and botany to refer to something that has wings or winglike structures.
In entomology
In entomology, "alate" usually refers to the winged form o ...
s, leave the colony in what is called a
nuptial flight
Nuptial flight is an important phase in the reproduction of most ant, termite, and some bee species. It is also observed in some fly species, such as '' Rhamphomyia longicauda''.
During the flight, virgin queens mate with males and then land t ...
. The nuptial flight usually takes place in the late spring or early summer when the weather is hot and humid. Heat makes flying easier and freshly fallen rain makes the ground softer for mated queens to dig nests. Males typically take flight before the females. Males then use visual cues to find a common mating ground, for example, a landmark such as a
pine tree
A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden ac ...
to which other males in the area converge. Males secrete a mating pheromone that females follow. Males will mount females in the air, but the actual mating process usually takes place on the ground. Females of some species mate with just one male but in others they may mate with as many as ten or more different males, storing the sperm in their
spermatheca
The spermatheca (pronounced plural: spermathecae ), also called receptaculum seminis (plural: receptacula seminis), is an organ of the female reproductive tract in insects, e.g. ants, bees, some molluscs, oligochaeta worms and certain other in ...
e.Hölldobler & Wilson (1990), pp. 143–179 In ''
Cardiocondyla elegans
''Cardiocondyla elegans'' is an ant
Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. M ...
,'' workers may transport newly emerged queens to other conspecific nests where wingless males from unrelated colonies can mate with them, a behavioural adaptation that may reduce the chances of inbreeding.
Mated females then seek a suitable place to begin a colony. There, they break off their wings using their tibial spurs and begin to lay and care for eggs. The females can selectively fertilise future eggs with the sperm stored to produce diploid workers or lay unfertilized haploid eggs to produce drones. The first workers to hatch are known as nanitics, and are weaker and smaller than later workers, but they begin to serve the colony immediately. They enlarge the nest, forage for food, and care for the other eggs. Species that have multiple queens may have a queen leaving the nest along with some workers to found a colony at a new site, a process akin to swarming in
honeybee
A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus ''Apis'' of the bee clade, all native to Afro-Eurasia. After bees spread naturally throughout Africa and Eurasia, humans became responsible for the current cosm ...
s.
Behaviour and ecology
Communication
Ants communicate with each other using
pheromone
A pheromone () is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting like hormones outside the body of the secreting individual, to affect the behavio ...
s, sounds, and touch. Since most ants live on the ground, they use the soil surface to leave pheromone trails that may be followed by other ants. In species that forage in groups, a forager that finds food marks a trail on the way back to the colony; this trail is followed by other ants, these ants then reinforce the trail when they head back with food to the colony. When the food source is exhausted, no new trails are marked by returning ants and the scent slowly dissipates. This behaviour helps ants deal with changes in their environment. For instance, when an established path to a food source is blocked by an obstacle, the foragers leave the path to explore new routes. If an ant is successful, it leaves a new trail marking the shortest route on its return. Successful trails are followed by more ants, reinforcing better routes and gradually identifying the best path.
Ants use pheromones for more than just making trails. A crushed ant emits an alarm pheromone that sends nearby ants into an attack frenzy and attracts more ants from farther away. Several ant species even use " propaganda pheromones" to confuse enemy ants and make them fight among themselves. Pheromones are produced by a wide range of structures including
Dufour's gland
Dufour's gland is an abdominal gland of certain insects, part of the anatomy of the ovipositor or sting apparatus in female members of Apocrita. The diversification of Hymenoptera took place in the Cretaceous and the gland may have developed at a ...
pygidium
The pygidium (plural pygidia) is the posterior body part or shield of crustaceans and some other arthropods, such as insects and the extinct trilobites. In groups other than insects, it contains the anus and, in females, the ovipositor. It is compo ...
sternum
The sternum or breastbone is a long flat bone located in the central part of the chest. It connects to the ribs via cartilage and forms the front of the rib cage, thus helping to protect the heart, lungs, and major blood vessels from injury. Sha ...
, and hind
tibia
The tibia (; ), also known as the shinbone or shankbone, is the larger, stronger, and anterior (frontal) of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates (the other being the fibula, behind and to the outside of the tibia); it connects ...
. Pheromones also are exchanged, mixed with food, and passed by
trophallaxis
Trophallaxis () is the transfer of food or other fluids among members of a community through mouth-to-mouth ( stomodeal) or anus-to-mouth ( proctodeal) feeding. Along with nutrients, trophallaxis can involve the transfer of molecules such as pher ...
, transferring information within the colony. This allows other ants to detect what task group (e.g., foraging or nest maintenance) other colony members belong to. In ant species with queen castes, when the dominant queen stops producing a specific pheromone, workers begin to raise new queens in the colony.Hölldobler & Wilson (1990), p. 354
Some ants produce sounds by
stridulation
Stridulation is the act of producing sound by rubbing together certain body parts. This behavior is mostly associated with insects, but other animals are known to do this as well, such as a number of species of fish, snakes and spiders. The mech ...
, using the gaster segments and their mandibles. Sounds may be used to communicate with colony members or with other species.
Defence
Ants attack and defend themselves by biting and, in many species, by stinging often injecting or spraying chemicals.
Bullet ant
A bullet is a kinetic projectile, a component of firearm ammunition that is shot from a gun barrel. Bullets are made of a variety of materials, such as copper, lead, steel, polymer, rubber and even wax. Bullets are made in various shapes and ...
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...
, are considered to have the most painful sting of any insect, although it is usually not fatal to humans. This sting is given the highest rating on the
Schmidt sting pain index
The Schmidt sting pain index is a pain scale rating the relative pain caused by different hymenopteran stings. It is mainly the work of Justin O. Schmidt (born 1947), an entomologist at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Arizona, United Sta ...
.
The sting of
jack jumper ant
Jack may refer to:
Places
* Jack, Alabama, US, an unincorporated community
* Jack, Missouri, US, an unincorporated community
* Jack County, Texas, a county in Texas, USA
People and fictional characters
* Jack (given name), a male given name, ...
s can be fatal, and an
antivenom
Antivenom, also known as antivenin, venom antiserum, and antivenom immunoglobulin, is a specific treatment for envenomation. It is composed of antibodies and used to treat certain venomous bites and stings. Antivenoms are recommended only if th ...
has been developed for it.
Fire ant
Fire ants are several species of ants in the genus ''Solenopsis'', which includes over 200 species. ''Solenopsis'' are stinging ants, and most of their common names reflect this, for example, ginger ants and tropical fire ants. Many of the nam ...
s, '' Solenopsis'' spp., are unique in having a venom sac containing
piperidine alkaloids
Piperidine alkaloids are naturally occurring chemical compounds from the group of alkaloids, which are chemically derived from piperidine.
Alkaloids with a piperidine building block are widespread and are usually further subdivided according to ...
. Their stings are painful and can be dangerous to hypersensitive people. Formicine ants secrete a poison from their glands, made mainly of formic acid.
Trap-jaw ants of the genus ''
Odontomachus
''Odontomachus'' is a genus of ants commonly called trap-jaw ants found in the tropics and subtropics throughout the world.
Overview
Commonly known as trap-jaw ants, species in ''Odontomachus'' have a pair of large, straight mandibles capabl ...
'' are equipped with mandibles called trap-jaws, which snap shut faster than any other
predatory
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...
Odontomachus bauri
''Odontomachus bauri'' is a species of ponerinae ant known as trap jaw ants. The trap jaw consists of mandibles which contain a spring-loaded catch mechanism.
This mechanism permits the ants to accumulate energy before striking or releasing the ...
'' recorded peak speeds of between , with the jaws closing within 130
microsecond
A microsecond is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one millionth (0.000001 or 10−6 or ) of a second. Its symbol is μs, sometimes simplified to us when Unicode is not available.
A microsecond is equal to 1000 ...
s on average.
The ants were also observed to use their jaws as a catapult to eject intruders or fling themselves backward to escape a threat. Before striking, the ant opens its mandibles extremely widely and locks them in this position by an internal mechanism. Energy is stored in a thick band of muscle and explosively released when triggered by the stimulation of sensory organs resembling hairs on the inside of the mandibles. The mandibles also permit slow and fine movements for other tasks. Trap-jaws also are seen in other ponerines such as ''
Anochetus
''Anochetus'' is a genus of small, carnivorous ants found in the tropics and subtropics throughout the world.
This genus is present in both the Old and New World and is certainly native to all continents except Antarctica and Europe. In Europe o ...
'', as well as some genera in the tribe Attini, such as ''
Daceton
''Daceton'' is a Neotropical genus of ants in the subfamily Myrmicinae. The genus contains only two species: '' D. armigerum'', the most studied species, distributed throughout northern South America, and '' D. boltoni'', known from Brazil and ...
'', ''
Orectognathus
''Orectognathus'' is a genus of ant
Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. M ...
'', and '' Strumigenys'', which are viewed as examples of
convergent evolution
Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar features in species of different periods or epochs in time. Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last com ...
group
A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together.
Groups of people
* Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity
* Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic ide ...
has enlarged mandibular glands that extend into their gaster. If combat takes a turn for the worse, a worker may perform a final act of suicidal altruism by rupturing the membrane of its gaster, causing the content of its mandibular glands to burst from the anterior region of its head, spraying a poisonous, corrosive secretion containing
acetophenone
Acetophenone is the organic compound with the chemical formula, formula C6H5C(O)CH3. It is the simplest aromatic ketone. This colorless, viscous liquid is a precursor to useful resins and fragrances.
Production
Acetophenone is formed as a byprodu ...
s and other chemicals that immobilise small insect attackers. The worker subsequently dies.
Suicidal defences by workers are also noted in a Brazilian ant, ''
Forelius pusillus
''Forelius pusillus'' is a species of ant in the genus '' Forelius''. Described by Santschi in 1922, the species is endemic to South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern ...
'', where a small group of ants leaves the security of the nest after sealing the entrance from the outside each evening.
In addition to defence against predators, ants need to protect their colonies from
pathogen
In biology, a pathogen ( el, πάθος, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of") in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ ...
s. Some worker ants maintain the hygiene of the colony and their activities include undertaking or ''
necrophoresis
Necrophoresis is a sanitation behavior found in social insects – such as ants, bees, wasps, and termites – in which they carry away the dead bodies of members of their colony from the nest or hive area. The term was introduced in 1958 by E.O. ...
'', the disposal of dead nest-mates.
Oleic acid
Oleic acid is a fatty acid that occurs naturally in various animal and vegetable fats and oils. It is an odorless, colorless oil, although commercial samples may be yellowish. In chemical terms, oleic acid is classified as a monounsaturated omeg ...
has been identified as the compound released from dead ants that triggers necrophoric behaviour in ''Atta mexicana'' while workers of ''Linepithema humile'' react to the absence of characteristic chemicals (
dolichodial
Dolichodial is a natural chemical compound with two aldehyde groups, which belongs to the group of iridoid
Iridoids are a type of monoterpenoids in the general form of cyclopentanopyran, found in a wide variety of plants and some animals. They ...
and
iridomyrmecin
Iridomyrmecin is a defensive chemical, classified as an iridoid, isolated from ants of the genus ''Iridomyrmex''. It has also evolved into a sex pheromone in wasps such as ''Leptopilina'', with host species using the smell of iridomyrmecin as a wa ...
) present on the cuticle of their living nestmates to trigger similar behaviour.
Nests may be protected from physical threats such as flooding and overheating by elaborate nest architecture. Workers of ''Cataulacus muticus'', an arboreal species that lives in plant hollows, respond to flooding by drinking water inside the nest, and excreting it outside. ''
Camponotus anderseni
''Colobopsis anderseni'', synonym ''Camponotus anderseni'', is a species of mangrove ant found in northern Australia.
Taxonomy
The species was originally placed in the ant genus '' Camponotus'' when described in 2001 as ''Camponotus (Colobopsi ...
'', which nests in the cavities of wood in mangrove habitats, deals with submergence under water by switching to
anaerobic respiration
Anaerobic respiration is respiration using electron acceptors other than molecular oxygen (O2). Although oxygen is not the final electron acceptor, the process still uses a respiratory electron transport chain.
In aerobic organisms undergoing r ...
.
Learning
Many animals can learn behaviours by imitation, but ants may be the only group apart from mammals where interactive teaching has been observed. A knowledgeable forager of ''
Temnothorax albipennis
''Temnothorax albipennis'', the rock ant is a species of small ant in the subfamily Myrmicinae. It occurs in Europe and builds simple nests in rock crevices.
Description
This species has the typical ant body pattern of head, mesosoma and metasom ...
'' can lead a naïve nest-mate to newly discovered food by the process of
tandem running
Tandem running is a pair movement coordination observed in ants and termites.
In ants, tandem running is used for social learning, by which one ant leads another native ant from the nest to the food source it has found. Tandem running is also us ...
. The follower obtains knowledge through its leading tutor. The leader is acutely sensitive to the progress of the follower and slows down when the follower lags and speeds up when the follower gets too close.
Controlled experiments with colonies of ''
Cerapachys biroi
''Ooceraea biroi'', the clonal raider ant, is a queenless clonal ant in the genus ''Ooceraea'' (recently transferred from the genus ''Cerapachys''). Native to the Asian mainland, this species has become invasive on tropical and subtropical islan ...
'' suggest that an individual may choose nest roles based on her previous experience. An entire generation of identical workers was divided into two groups whose outcome in food foraging was controlled. One group was continually rewarded with prey, while it was made certain that the other failed. As a result, members of the successful group intensified their foraging attempts while the unsuccessful group ventured out fewer and fewer times. A month later, the successful foragers continued in their role while the others had moved to specialise in brood care.
Nest construction
Complex nests are built by many ant species, but other species are nomadic and do not build permanent structures. Ants may form subterranean nests or build them on trees. These nests may be found in the ground, under stones or logs, inside logs, hollow stems, or even acorns. The materials used for construction include soil and plant matter, and ants carefully select their nest sites; ''Temnothorax albipennis'' will avoid sites with dead ants, as these may indicate the presence of pests or disease. They are quick to abandon established nests at the first sign of threats.
The
army ant
The name army ant (or legionary ant or ''marabunta'') is applied to over 200 ant species in different lineages. Because of their aggressive predatory foraging groups, known as "raids", a huge number of ants forage simultaneously over a limi ...
s of South America, such as the ''
Eciton burchellii
''Eciton burchellii'' is a species of New World army ant in the genus ''Eciton''. This species performs expansive, organized swarm raids that give it the informal name, ''Eciton'' army ant. This species displays a high degree of worker polymorp ...
'' species, and the
driver ant
''Dorylus'', also known as driver ants, safari ants, or siafu, is a large genus of army ants found primarily in central and east Africa, although the range also extends to southern Africa and tropical Asia. The term siafu is a loanword from Swah ...
s of Africa do not build permanent nests, but instead, alternate between nomadism and stages where the workers form a temporary nest ( bivouac) from their own bodies, by holding each other together.
Weaver ant (''Oecophylla'' spp.) workers build nests in trees by attaching leaves together, first pulling them together with bridges of workers and then inducing their larvae to produce silk as they are moved along the leaf edges. Similar forms of nest construction are seen in some species of ''
Polyrhachis
''Polyrhachis'' is a genus of formicine ants found in the Old World with over 600 species. The genus is yet to be comprehensively resolved and contains many varied species including nest-weavers (e.g. ''Polyrhachis dives''), swimming workers ( ...
''.
''
Formica polyctena
''Formica polyctena'' is a species of European red wood ant in the genus ''Formica'' and large family Formicidae. The species was first described by Arnold Förster in 1850. The latin species name ''polyctena'' is from Greek and literally mea ...
'', among other ant species, constructs nests that maintain a relatively constant interior temperature that aids in the development of larvae. The ants maintain the nest temperature by choosing the location, nest materials, controlling ventilation and maintaining the heat from solar radiation, worker activity and metabolism, and in some moist nests, microbial activity in the nest materials.
Some ant species, such as those that use natural cavities, can be opportunistic and make use of the controlled micro-climate provided inside human dwellings and other artificial structures to house their colonies and nest structures.
File:AntBridge Crossing 03.jpg
File:AntBridge Crossing 04.jpg
File:AntBridge Crossing 08.jpg
File:AntBridge Crossing 10.jpg
Cultivation of food
Most ants are generalist predators, scavengers, and indirect herbivores, but a few have evolved specialised ways of obtaining nutrition. It is believed that many ant species that engage in indirect herbivory rely on specialized symbiosis with their gut microbes to upgrade the nutritional value of the food they collect and allow them to survive in nitrogen poor regions, such as rainforest canopies.
Leafcutter ant
Leafcutter ants, a non-generic name, are any of 47 species of leaf-chewing ants belonging to the two genera '' Atta'' and ''Acromyrmex''.
These species of tropical, fungus-growing ants are all endemic to South and Central America, Mexico, and par ...
s (''
Atta Atta or ATTA may refer to:
* Atta Halilintar, Indonesian YouTuber, singer and entrepreneur
* ''Atta'' (ant), a genus of ants in the family Formicidae
* ''Atta'' (novel), a 1953 novel by Francis Rufus Bellamy
* Atta flour, whole wheat flour made f ...
'' and ''
Acromyrmex
''Acromyrmex'' is a genus of New World ants of the subfamily Myrmicinae. This genus is found in South America and parts of Central America and the Caribbean Islands, and contains 33 known species.
Commonly known as " leafcutter ants" they compri ...
'') feed exclusively on a
fungus
A fungus ( : fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately from t ...
that grows only within their colonies. They continually collect leaves which are taken to the colony, cut into tiny pieces and placed in fungal gardens. Ergates specialise in related tasks according to their sizes. The largest ants cut stalks, smaller workers chew the leaves and the smallest tend the fungus. Leafcutter ants are sensitive enough to recognise the reaction of the fungus to different plant material, apparently detecting chemical signals from the fungus. If a particular type of leaf is found to be toxic to the fungus, the colony will no longer collect it. The ants feed on structures produced by the fungi called ''
gongylidia
Gongylidia (singular gongylidium) are hyphal swellings of fungus cultivated by higher-attine genera of fungus-growing ants. This fungus no longer exists naturally outside the ant colonies.
Gongylidia are fed to the developing larvae and distribu ...
''. Symbiotic bacteria on the exterior surface of the ants produce antibiotics that kill bacteria introduced into the nest that may harm the fungi.
Navigation
Foraging
Foraging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavi ...
ants travel distances of up to from their nest and scent trails allow them to find their way back even in the dark. In hot and arid regions, day-foraging ants face death by desiccation, so the ability to find the shortest route back to the nest reduces that risk. Diurnal desert ants of the genus '' Cataglyphis'' such as the Sahara desert ant navigate by keeping track of direction as well as distance travelled. Distances travelled are measured using an internal
pedometer
A pedometer, or step-counter, is a device, usually portable and electronic or electromechanical, that counts each step a person takes by detecting the motion of the person's hands or hips. Because the distance of each person's step varies, a ...
that keeps count of the steps taken and also by evaluating the movement of objects in their visual field (
optical flow
Optical flow or optic flow is the pattern of apparent motion of objects, surfaces, and edges in a visual scene caused by the relative motion between an observer and a scene. Optical flow can also be defined as the distribution of apparent veloci ...
). Directions are measured using the position of the sun.
They integrate this information to find the shortest route back to their nest.
Like all ants, they can also make use of visual landmarks when available as well as olfactory and tactile cues to navigate. Some species of ant are able to use the
Earth's magnetic field
Earth's magnetic field, also known as the geomagnetic field, is the magnetic field that extends from Earth's interior out into space, where it interacts with the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun. The magnetic ...
for navigation. The compound eyes of ants have specialised cells that detect polarised light from the Sun, which is used to determine direction.
These polarization detectors are sensitive in the
ultraviolet
Ultraviolet (UV) is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength from 10 nm (with a corresponding frequency around 30 PHz) to 400 nm (750 THz), shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation ...
region of the light spectrum. In some army ant species, a group of foragers who become separated from the main column may sometimes turn back on themselves and form a circular ant mill. The workers may then run around continuously until they die of exhaustion.
Locomotion
The female worker ants do not have wings and reproductive females lose their wings after their mating flights in order to begin their colonies. Therefore, unlike their wasp ancestors, most ants travel by walking. Some species are capable of leaping. For example, Jerdon's jumping ant (''
Harpegnathos saltator
''Harpegnathos saltator'', sometimes called the Indian jumping ant or Jerdon's jumping ant, is a species of ant found in India. They have long mandibles and have the ability to leap a few inches. They are large-eyed and active predators that hu ...
'') is able to jump by synchronising the action of its mid and hind pairs of legs. There are several species of
gliding ant
Gliding ants are arboreal ants of several different genera that are able to control the direction of their descent when falling from a tree. Living in the rainforest canopy like many other gliders, gliding ants use their gliding to return to the ...
including ''Cephalotes atratus''; this may be a common trait among arboreal ants with small colonies. Ants with this ability are able to control their horizontal movement so as to catch tree trunks when they fall from atop the forest canopy.
Other species of ants can form chains to bridge gaps over water, underground, or through spaces in vegetation. Some species also form floating rafts that help them survive floods. These rafts may also have a role in allowing ants to colonise islands. ''
Polyrhachis sokolova
'' Polyrhachis sokolova'' is a species of ant from Hong Kong that recently was discovered to be capable of surviving tidal inundations.
Researchers at the James Cook University gained attention in 2006 after finding and reporting this behavior ...
mangrove
A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in severa ...
swamps, can swim and live in underwater nests. Since they lack
gill
A gill () is a respiratory organ that many aquatic organisms use to extract dissolved oxygen from water and to excrete carbon dioxide. The gills of some species, such as hermit crabs, have adapted to allow respiration on land provided they are ...
s, they go to trapped pockets of air in the submerged nests to breathe.
Cooperation and competition
Not all ants have the same kind of societies. The Australian bulldog ants are among the biggest and most basal of ants. Like virtually all ants, they are
eusocial
Eusociality (from Greek εὖ ''eu'' "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping gen ...
, but their social behaviour is poorly developed compared to other species. Each individual hunts alone, using her large eyes instead of chemical senses to find prey.
Some species attack and take over neighbouring ant colonies. Extreme specialists among these
slave-raiding ant
Slave-making ants are brood parasites that capture broods of other ant species to increase the worker force of their colony. After emerging in the slave-maker nest, slave workers work as if they were in their own colony, while parasite workers on ...
s, such as the Amazon ants, are incapable of feeding themselves and need captured workers to survive. Captured workers of enslaved ''
Temnothorax
''Temnothorax'' is a genus of ants in the subfamily Myrmicinae. It contains more than 380 species.
Biology
The workers of ''Temnothorax'' species are generally small. Colonies are typically monogynous, although facultative polygyny has been doc ...
'' species have evolved a counter-strategy, destroying just the female pupae of the slave-making ''
Temnothorax americanus
''Temnothorax americanus'' is a species of slave-maker ant in the genus ''Temnothorax''. The ants are 2–3 mm in size, and endemic to the northeastern United States and adjacent Canadian regions. They do not forage for food, but instead ' ...
'', but sparing the males (who do not take part in slave-raiding as adults).
Ants identify kin and nestmates through their scent, which comes from
hydrocarbon
In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbons are examples of group 14 hydrides. Hydrocarbons are generally colourless and hydrophobic, and their odors are usually weak or ...
-laced secretions that coat their exoskeletons. If an ant is separated from its original colony, it will eventually lose the colony scent. Any ant that enters a colony without a matching scent will be attacked.
Parasitic ant species enter the colonies of host ants and establish themselves as social parasites; species such as '' Strumigenys xenos'' are entirely parasitic and do not have workers, but instead, rely on the food gathered by their ''Strumigenys perplexa'' hosts. This form of parasitism is seen across many ant genera, but the parasitic ant is usually a species that is closely related to its host. A variety of methods are employed to enter the nest of the host ant. A parasitic queen may enter the host nest before the first brood has hatched, establishing herself prior to development of a colony scent. Other species use pheromones to confuse the host ants or to trick them into carrying the parasitic queen into the nest. Some simply fight their way into the nest.Hölldobler & Wilson (1990), pp. 436–448
A conflict between the sexes of a species is seen in some species of ants with these reproducers apparently competing to produce offspring that are as closely related to them as possible. The most extreme form involves the production of clonal offspring. An extreme of sexual conflict is seen in ''
Wasmannia auropunctata
The little fire ant (''Wasmannia auropunctata''), also known as the electric ant, is a small (approx long), light to golden brown (ginger) social ant native to Central and South America, now spread to parts of Africa (including Gabon and Camer ...
'', where the queens produce diploid daughters by thelytokous parthenogenesis and males produce clones by a process whereby a diploid egg loses its maternal contribution to produce haploid males who are clones of the father.
Relationships with other organisms
Ants form symbiotic associations with a range of species, including other ant species, other insects, plants, and fungi. They also are preyed on by many animals and even certain fungi. Some arthropod species spend part of their lives within ant nests, either preying on ants, their larvae, and eggs, consuming the food stores of the ants, or avoiding predators. These
inquiline
In zoology, an inquiline (from Latin ''inquilinus'', "lodger" or "tenant") is an animal that lives commensally in the nest, burrow, or dwelling place of an animal of another species. For example, some organisms such as insects may live in the h ...
s may bear a close resemblance to ants. The nature of this ant mimicry (myrmecomorphy) varies, with some cases involving Batesian mimicry, where the mimic reduces the risk of predation. Others show
Wasmannian mimicry
In evolutionary biology, mimicry is an evolved resemblance between an organism and another object, often an organism of another species. Mimicry may evolve between different species, or between individuals of the same species. Often, mimicry f ...
, a form of mimicry seen only in inquilines.
Aphid
Aphids are small sap-sucking insects and members of the superfamily Aphidoidea. Common names include greenfly and blackfly, although individuals within a species can vary widely in color. The group includes the fluffy white woolly aphids. A t ...
s and other hemipteran insects secrete a sweet liquid called honeydew, when they feed on
plant sap
Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant.
Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a se ...
. The sugars in honeydew are a high-energy food source, which many ant species collect. In some cases, the aphids secrete the honeydew in response to ants tapping them with their antennae. The ants in turn keep predators away from the aphids and will move them from one feeding location to another. When migrating to a new area, many colonies will take the aphids with them, to ensure a continued supply of honeydew. Ants also tend mealybugs to harvest their honeydew. Mealybugs may become a serious pest of pineapples if ants are present to protect mealybugs from their natural enemies.
Myrmecophilous
Myrmecophily ( , ) is the term applied to positive interspecies associations between ants and a variety of other organisms, such as plants, other arthropods, and fungi. Myrmecophily refers to mutualistic associations with ants, though in its ...
Lycaenidae
Lycaenidae is the second-largest family of butterflies (behind Nymphalidae, brush-footed butterflies), with over 6,000 species worldwide, whose members are also called gossamer-winged butterflies. They constitute about 30% of the known butterf ...
(e.g., blues, coppers, or hairstreaks) are herded by the ants, led to feeding areas in the daytime, and brought inside the ants' nest at night. The caterpillars have a gland which secretes honeydew when the ants massage them. Some caterpillars produce vibrations and sounds that are perceived by the ants. A similar adaptation can be seen in
Grizzled skipper
''Pyrgus'' is a genus in the skippers butterfly family, Hesperiidae, known as the grizzled skippers. The name "checkered" or "chequered skipper" may also be applied to some species, but also refers to species in the genera '' Burnsius'' and '' ...
butterflies that emit vibrations by expanding their wings in order to communicate with ants, which are natural predators of these butterflies. Other caterpillars have evolved from ant-loving to ant-eating: these myrmecophagous caterpillars secrete a pheromone that makes the ants act as if the caterpillar is one of their own larvae. The caterpillar is then taken into the ant nest where it feeds on the ant larvae. A number of specialized bacteria have been found as endosymbionts in ant guts. Some of the dominant bacteria belong to the order
Hyphomicrobiales
The ''Hyphomicrobiales'' are an order of Gram-negative Alphaproteobacteria.
The rhizobia, which fix nitrogen and are symbiotic with plant roots, appear in several different families. The four families ''Nitrobacteraceae'', ''Hyphomicrobiaceae' ...
whose members are known for being nitrogen-fixing symbionts in legumes but the species found in ant lack the ability to fix nitrogen.
Fungus-growing ants
Fungus-growing ants (tribe Attini) comprise all the known fungus-growing ant species participating in ant–fungus mutualism. They are known for cutting grasses and leaves, carrying them to their colonies' nests, and using them to grow fungus o ...
leafcutter ant
Leafcutter ants, a non-generic name, are any of 47 species of leaf-chewing ants belonging to the two genera '' Atta'' and ''Acromyrmex''.
These species of tropical, fungus-growing ants are all endemic to South and Central America, Mexico, and par ...
s, cultivate certain species of fungus in the genera ''
Leucoagaricus
''Leucoagaricus'' is a genus of fungi in the family Agaricaceae. Several fungus-growing ants cultivate multiple species for food. The genus contains approximately 90 species.
Taxonomy
This group of mushrooms was first defined as a subgenus of ' ...
'' or ''
Leucocoprinus
''Leucocoprinus'' is a genus of fungi in the family Agaricaceae. Its best-known member is the distinctive yellow mushroom '' Leucocoprinus birnbaumii'', which is found in plant pots and greenhouses worldwide. The type species is '' Leucocoprinus ...
'' of the family
Agaricaceae
The Agaricaceae are a family of basidiomycete fungi and include the genus ''Agaricus'', as well as basidiomycetes previously classified in the families Tulostomataceae, Lepiotaceae, and Lycoperdaceae.
Taxonomy
The family Agaricaceae was publishe ...
. In this ant-fungus mutualism, both species depend on each other for survival. The ant ''
Allomerus decemarticulatus
''Allomerus decemarticulatus'' is an Amazonian ant species found in the tropics of South America. This species is most notable for the workers’ complex and extreme predatory behavior, which involves a symbiosis with both a plant and fungal s ...
'' has evolved a three-way association with the host plant, ''
Hirtella physophora
''Hirtella physophora'' is a species of plant in the family Chrysobalanaceae
Chrysobalanaceae is a family of flowering plants, consisting of trees and shrubs in 27 genera and about 700 species of pantropical distribution with a centre of div ...
'' (
Chrysobalanaceae
Chrysobalanaceae is a family of flowering plants, consisting of trees and shrubs in 27 genera and about 700 species of pantropical distribution with a centre of diversity in the Amazon. Some of the species contain silica in their bodies for ri ...
), and a sticky fungus which is used to trap their insect prey.
Lemon ants make
devil's garden
In myrmecology and forest ecology, a devil's garden (Kichwa: ''Supay chakra''Frederickson, M. E., & Gordon, D. (2007). The devil to pay: the cost of mutualism with ''Myrmelachista schumanni'' ants in 'devil's gardens' is increased herbivory on ' ...
s by killing surrounding plants with their stings and leaving a pure patch of lemon ant trees, (''
Duroia hirsuta
''Duroia hirsuta'' is a myrmecophyte tree species from the Amazon Forest. It is one of some 37 species of ''Duroia,'' which are shrubs or canopy trees in the family Rubiaceae, favouring ants (myrmecophilous), and occurring in Central America as ...
''). This modification of the forest provides the ants with more nesting sites inside the stems of the ''
Duroia
''Duroia'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. The genus is found from Costa Rica to tropical South America.
Ecology
A number of ''Duroia'' species, and possibly all, are capable of biochemical interactions inhibiting the ...
'' trees. Although some ants obtain nectar from flowers, pollination by ants is somewhat rare, one example being of the pollination of the orchid ''
Leporella fimbriata
''Leporella fimbriata'', commonly known as ''hare orchid'' or ''fringed hare orchid'', is the only species in the flowering plant genus ''Leporella'' in the orchid family, Orchidaceae and is endemic to the southern Australia mainland. It is rel ...
'' which induces male ''Myrmecia urens'' to pseudocopulate with the flowers, transferring pollen in the process. One theory that has been proposed for the rarity of pollination is that the secretions of the metapleural gland inactivate and reduce the viability of pollen. Some plants have special nectar exuding structures, extrafloral nectaries, that provide food for ants, which in turn protect the plant from more damaging
herbivorous
A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthpar ...
insects. Species such as the bullhorn acacia (''
Acacia cornigera
''Vachellia cornigera'', commonly known as bullhorn acacia (family Fabaceae), is a swollen-thorn tree native to Mexico and Central America. The common name of "bullhorn" refers to the enlarged, hollowed-out, swollen thorns (technically called sti ...
'') in Central America have hollow thorns that house colonies of stinging ants (''
Pseudomyrmex ferruginea
The acacia ant (''Pseudomyrmex ferruginea'') is a species of ant of the genus ''Pseudomyrmex''. These arboreal, wasp-like ants have an orange-brown body around 3 mm in length and very large eyes. The acacia ant is best known and named for ...
'') who defend the tree against insects, browsing mammals, and
epiphytic
An epiphyte is an organism that grows on the surface of a plant and derives its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain, water (in marine environments) or from debris accumulating around it. The plants on which epiphytes grow are called phoroph ...
vines.
Isotopic labelling
Isotopic labeling (or isotopic labelling) is a technique used to track the passage of an isotope (an atom with a detectable variation in neutron count) through a reaction, metabolic pathway, or cell. The reactant is 'labeled' by replacing specif ...
studies suggest that plants also obtain nitrogen from the ants. In return, the ants obtain food from protein- and lipid-rich
Beltian bodies
A Beltian body is a detachable tip found on the pinnules of some species of '' Acacia'' and closely related genera. Beltian bodies, named after Thomas Belt, are rich in lipids, sugars and proteins and often red in colour. They are believed to have ...
. In Fiji ''
Philidris nagasau
''Philidris nagasau'' is a species of ant in the genus ''Philidris''. Described by William M. Mann in 1921, the species is endemic to Fiji.
''Philidris nagasau'' makes its living by planting seeds of epiphytes such as ''Squamellaria'' in the ba ...
'' (Dolichoderinae) are known to selectively grow species of epiphytic ''
Squamellaria
''Squamellaria'' is a genus of myrmecophytic flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. It is endemic to the islands of Fiji.
It is one of five ant-plant genera in the family Rubiaceae, the others being ''Anthorrhiza'', ''Hydnophytum'', '' Myr ...
'' (Rubiaceae) which produce large domatia inside which the ant colonies nest. The ants plant the seeds and the domatia of young seedling are immediately occupied and the ant faeces in them contribute to rapid growth. Similar dispersal associations are found with other dolichoderines in the region as well. Another example of this type of
ectosymbiosis
Ectosymbiosis is a form of symbiotic behavior in which a parasite lives on the body surface of the host, including internal surfaces such as the lining of the digestive tube and the ducts of glands. The parasitic species is generally a ...
comes from the ''
Macaranga
''Macaranga'' is a large genus of Old World tropical trees of the family Euphorbiaceae and the only genus in the subtribe Macaranginae (tribe Acalypheae). Native to Africa, Australasia, Asia and various islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, t ...
'' tree, which has stems adapted to house colonies of ''
Crematogaster
''Crematogaster'' is an ecologically diverse genus of ants found worldwide, which are characterised by a distinctive heart-shaped gaster (abdomen), which gives them one of their common names, the Saint Valentine ant. Members of this genus are ...
'' ants.
Many plant species have seeds that are adapted for dispersal by ants.
Seed dispersal
In Spermatophyte plants, seed dispersal is the movement, spread or transport of seeds away from the parent plant.
Plants have limited mobility and rely upon a variety of dispersal vectors to transport their seeds, including both abiotic vectors ...
by ants or
myrmecochory
Myrmecochory ( (sometimes myrmechory); from grc, μύρμηξ, mýrmēks ("ant") and ''khoreíā'' ("circular dance") is seed dispersal by ants, an ecologically significant ant–plant interaction with worldwide distribution. Most myrmeco ...
is widespread, and new estimates suggest that nearly 9% of all plant species may have such ant associations. Often, seed-dispersing ants perform directed dispersal, depositing the seeds in locations that increase the likelihood of seed survival to reproduction. Some plants in arid, fire-prone systems are particularly dependent on ants for their survival and dispersal as the seeds are transported to safety below the ground. Many ant-dispersed seeds have special external structures,
elaiosome
Elaiosomes ( grc, ἔλαιον ''élaion'' "oil" + ''sóma'' "body") are fleshy structures that are attached to the seeds of many plant species. The elaiosome is rich in lipids and proteins, and may be variously shaped. Many plants have elaio ...
s, that are sought after by ants as food. Ants can substantially alter rate of decomposition and nutrient cycling in their nest. By myrmecochory and modification of soil conditions they substantially alter vegetation and nutrient cycling in surrounding ecosystem.
A
convergence
Convergence may refer to:
Arts and media Literature
*''Convergence'' (book series), edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen
*Convergence (comics), "Convergence" (comics), two separate story lines published by DC Comics:
**A four-part crossover storyline that ...
, possibly a form of mimicry, is seen in the eggs of stick insects. They have an edible elaiosome-like structure and are taken into the ant nest where the young hatch.
Most ants are predatory and some prey on and obtain food from other social insects including other ants. Some species specialise in preying on termites (''
Megaponera
''Megaponera analis'' is the sole species of the genus ''Megaponera''. They are a strictly termite-eating (termitophagous) ponerine ant species widely distributed in Sub-Saharan Africa and most commonly known for their column-like raiding format ...
'' and ''Termitopone'') while a few Cerapachyinae prey on other ants. Some termites, including ''
Nasutitermes corniger
''Nasutitermes corniger'' is a species of arboreal termite that is endemic to the neotropics. It is very closely related to '' Nasutitermes ephratae''.
The species has been studied relatively intensively, particularly on Barro Colorado Island, Pa ...
'', form associations with certain ant species to keep away predatory ant species. The tropical wasp ''
Mischocyttarus drewseni
''Mischocyttarus drewseni'', which is sometimes spelled "drewsenii", is a social wasp in the family Vespidae. It is commonly found in Neotropical regions of South America, including Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia and Paraguay. This mid-sized ...
'' coats the pedicel of its nest with an ant-repellent chemical. It is suggested that many tropical wasps may build their nests in trees and cover them to protect themselves from ants. Other wasps, such as '' A. multipicta'', defend against ants by blasting them off the nest with bursts of wing buzzing. Stingless bees (''
Trigona
''Trigona'' is one of the largest genera of stingless bees, comprising about 32 species, exclusively occurring in the New World, and formerly including many more subgenera than the present assemblage; many of these former subgenera have been el ...
'' and ''
Melipona
''Melipona'' is a genus of stingless bees, widespread in warm areas of the Neotropics, from Sinaloa and Tamaulipas (México) to Tucumán and Misiones (Argentina). About 70 species are known.Grüter, C. 2020. ''Stingless Bees: Their Behaviour, E ...
'') use chemical defences against ants.
Flies in the Old World genus ''
Bengalia
''Bengalia'' is a genus of blow flies in the family Calliphoridae with one authority considering the genus to belong to a separate family Bengaliidae.Lehrer, A.Z., 2003, Bengaliidae n. fam. Une nouvelle famille de Diptera Cyclorrhapha. Entom. Croa ...
'' (
Calliphoridae
The Calliphoridae (commonly known as blow flies, blow-flies, carrion flies, bluebottles, greenbottles, or cluster flies) are a family of insects in the order Diptera, with almost 1,900 known species. The maggot larvae, often used as fishing ba ...
)
prey
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill ...
on ants and are
kleptoparasite
Kleptoparasitism (etymologically, parasitism by theft) is a form of feeding in which one animal deliberately takes food from another. The strategy is evolutionarily stable when stealing is less costly than direct feeding, which can mean when foo ...
s, snatching prey or brood from the mandibles of adult ants. Wingless and legless females of the
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
n phorid fly (''Vestigipoda myrmolarvoidea'') live in the nests of ants of the genus ''
Aenictus
''Aenictus'' is a large army ant genus distributed in the Old World tropics and subtropics. It contains about 181 species, making it one of the larger ant genera of the world.
Biology and distribution
The genus presently has 181 species, dist ...
'' and are cared for by the ants.
Fungi in the genera '' Cordyceps'' and ''
Ophiocordyceps
''Ophiocordyceps'' is a genus of fungi within the family Ophiocordycipitaceae. The widespread genus, first described scientifically by British mycologist Tom Petch in 1931, contains about 140 species that grow on insects. Anamorphic genera that c ...
'' infect ants. Ants react to their infection by climbing up plants and sinking their mandibles into plant tissue. The fungus kills the ants, grows on their remains, and produces a
fruiting body
The sporocarp (also known as fruiting body, fruit body or fruitbody) of fungi is a multicellular structure on which spore-producing structures, such as basidia or asci, are borne. The fruitbody is part of the sexual phase of a fungal life cy ...
. It appears that the fungus alters the behaviour of the ant to help disperse its spores in a microhabitat that best suits the fungus.
Strepsiptera
The Strepsiptera are an order of insects with eleven extant families that include about 600 described species. They are endoparasites in other insects, such as bees, wasps, leafhoppers, silverfish, and cockroaches. Females of most species never ...
n parasites also manipulate their ant host to climb grass stems, to help the parasite find mates.
A nematode (''Myrmeconema neotropicum'') that infects canopy ants (''
Cephalotes atratus
''Cephalotes atratus'' is a species of arboreal ant in the genus ''Cephalotes'', a genus characterized by its odd shaped head. These ants are known as gliding ants because of their ability to "parachute" by steering their fall if they lose their ...
'') causes the black-coloured gasters of workers to turn red. The parasite also alters the behaviour of the ant, causing them to carry their gasters high. The conspicuous red gasters are mistaken by birds for ripe fruits, such as ''Hyeronima alchorneoides'', and eaten. The droppings of the bird are collected by other ants and fed to their young, leading to further spread of the nematode.
A study of ''
Temnothorax nylanderi
''Temnothorax nylanderi'' is a species of ant in the genus ''Temnothorax
''Temnothorax'' is a genus of ants in the subfamily Myrmicinae. It contains more than 380 species.
Biology
The workers of ''Temnothorax'' species are generally small. ...
'' colonies in Germany found that workers parasitized by the tapeworm ''
Anomotaenia brevis
''Anomotaenia brevis'' is a tapeworm which has been found to be one of many parasite species able to manipulate their host's behavior. Host manipulation is commonly observed in parasites with complex life cycles reliant on multiple hosts for deve ...
'' (ants are intermediate hosts, the definitive hosts are woodpeckers) lived much longer than unparasitized workers and had a reduced mortality rate, comparable to that of the queens of the same species, which live for as long as two decades.
South American poison dart frogs in the genus ''
Dendrobates
''Dendrobates'' is a genus of poison dart frogs native to Central and South America. It once contained numerous species, but most originally placed in this genus have been split off into other genera such as ''Adelphobates'', '' Ameerega'', '' A ...
'' feed mainly on ants, and the toxins in their skin may come from the ants.
Army ant
The name army ant (or legionary ant or ''marabunta'') is applied to over 200 ant species in different lineages. Because of their aggressive predatory foraging groups, known as "raids", a huge number of ants forage simultaneously over a limi ...
s forage in a wide roving column, attacking any animals in that path that are unable to escape. In Central and South America, ''
Eciton burchellii
''Eciton burchellii'' is a species of New World army ant in the genus ''Eciton''. This species performs expansive, organized swarm raids that give it the informal name, ''Eciton'' army ant. This species displays a high degree of worker polymorp ...
'' is the swarming ant most commonly attended by " ant-following" birds such as
antbird
The antbirds are a large passerine bird family, Thamnophilidae, found across subtropical and tropical Central and South America, from Mexico to Argentina. There are more than 230 species, known variously as antshrikes, antwrens, antvireos, fire ...
s and
woodcreeper
The woodcreepers (Dendrocolaptinae) comprise a subfamily of suboscine passerine birds endemic to the Neotropics. They have traditionally been considered a distinct family Dendrocolaptidae, but most authorities now place them as a subfamily of th ...
s. This behaviour was once considered mutualistic, but later studies found the birds to be
parasitic
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson ha ...
. Direct
kleptoparasitism
Kleptoparasitism (etymologically, parasitism by theft) is a form of feeding in which one animal deliberately takes food from another. The strategy is evolutionarily stable when stealing is less costly than direct feeding, which can mean when f ...
(birds stealing food from the ants' grasp) is rare and has been noted in
Inca dove
The Inca dove or Mexican dove (''Columbina inca'') is a small New World dove. The species was first described by French surgeon and naturalist René Lesson in 1847. It reaches a length of and weighs . The Inca dove has an average wingspan of 2 ...
s which pick seeds at nest entrances as they are being transported by species of ''
Pogonomyrmex
''Pogonomyrmex'' is a genus of harvester ants, occurring primarily in the deserts of North, Central, and South America, with a single endemic species from Haiti.Cole, A.C. 1968. Pogonomyrmex Harvester Ants: a study of the genus in North America. ...
''. Birds that follow ants eat many prey insects and thus decrease the foraging success of ants. Birds indulge in a peculiar behaviour called
anting
Anting () is a town in Jiading District, Shanghai, bordering Kunshan, Jiangsu to the west. It has 96,000 inhabitants and, after the July 2009 merger of Huangdu (), an area of .
that, as yet, is not fully understood. Here birds rest on ant nests, or pick and drop ants onto their wings and feathers; this may be a means to remove ectoparasites from the birds.
Anteaters,
aardvark
The aardvark ( ; ''Orycteropus afer'') is a medium-sized, burrowing, nocturnal mammal native to Africa. It is the only living species of the order Tubulidentata, although other prehistoric species and genera of Tubulidentata are known. Unlik ...
echidna
Echidnas (), sometimes known as spiny anteaters, are quill-covered monotremes (egg-laying mammals) belonging to the family Tachyglossidae . The four extant species of echidnas and the platypus are the only living mammals that lay eggs and the ...
s and
numbat
The numbat (''Myrmecobius fasciatus''), also known as the noombat or walpurti, is an insectivorous marsupial. It is diurnal and its diet consists almost exclusively of termites.
The species was once widespread across southern Australia, but ...
s have special adaptations for living on a diet of ants. These adaptations include long, sticky tongues to capture ants and strong claws to break into ant nests.
Brown bear
The brown bear (''Ursus arctos'') is a large bear species found across Eurasia and North America. In North America, the populations of brown bears are called grizzly bears, while the subspecies that inhabits the Kodiak Islands of Alaska is ...
s (''Ursus arctos'') have been found to feed on ants. About 12%, 16%, and 4% of their faecal volume in spring, summer and autumn, respectively, is composed of ants.
Relationship with humans
Ants perform many ecological roles that are beneficial to humans, including the suppression of pest populations and aeration of the
soil
Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt
Dirt is an unclean matter, especially when in contact with a person's clothes, skin, or possessions. In such cases, they are said to become dirty.
Common types of dirt include:
* Debri ...
. The use of weaver ants in citrus cultivation in southern China is considered one of the oldest known applications of
biological control
Biological control or biocontrol is a method of controlling pests, such as insects, mites, weeds, and plant diseases, using other organisms. It relies on predation, parasitism, herbivory, or other natural mechanisms, but typically also i ...
.Hölldobler & Wilson (1990), pp. 619–629 On the other hand, ants may become nuisances when they invade buildings or cause economic losses.
In some parts of the world (mainly Africa and South America), large ants, especially
army ant
The name army ant (or legionary ant or ''marabunta'') is applied to over 200 ant species in different lineages. Because of their aggressive predatory foraging groups, known as "raids", a huge number of ants forage simultaneously over a limi ...
s, are used as surgical sutures. The wound is pressed together and ants are applied along it. The ant seizes the edges of the wound in its mandibles and locks in place. The body is then cut off and the head and mandibles remain in place to close the wound. The large heads of the dinergates (soldiers) of the leafcutting ant ''
Atta cephalotes
''Atta cephalotes'' is a species of leafcutter ant in the tribe Attini (the fungus-growing ants). A single colony of ants can contain up to 5 million members, and each colony has one queen that can live more than 15 years. The colony comprises ...
'' are also used by native surgeons in closing wounds.
Some ants have toxic venom and are of medical importance. The species include ''
Paraponera clavata
''Paraponera clavata'' is a species of ant, commonly known as the bullet ant, named for its extremely painful sting. It inhabits humid lowland rainforests in Central and South America.
Etymology
The specific epithet of the ant, ', means "club- ...
'' (tocandira) and ''
Dinoponera
''Dinoponera'' is a strictly South American genus of ant in the subfamily Ponerinae, commonly called tocandiras or giant Amazonian ants. These ants are generally less well known than ''Paraponera clavata'', the bullet ant, yet ''Dinoponera'' f ...
'' spp. (false tocandiras) of South America and the ''Myrmecia'' ants of Australia.
In
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
, ants are used to help harvest the seeds of
rooibos
Rooibos ( ; , meaning "red bush"), or ''Aspalathus linearis'', is a broom-like member of the plant family Fabaceae that grows in South Africa's fynbos biome.
The leaves are used to make a herbal tea that is called rooibos (especially in S ...
(''Aspalathus linearis''), a plant used to make a herbal tea. The plant disperses its seeds widely, making manual collection difficult. Black ants collect and store these and other seeds in their nest, where humans can gather them ''en masse''. Up to half a pound (200 g) of seeds may be collected from one ant-heap.
Although most ants survive attempts by humans to eradicate them, a few are highly endangered. These tend to be island species that have evolved specialized traits and risk being displaced by introduced ant species. Examples include the critically endangered Sri Lankan relict ant (''Aneuretus simoni'') and ''
Adetomyrma venatrix
''Adetomyrma venatrix'', more commonly known as the Dracula ant, so named because of its grisly feeding habits of drinking the blood of its young, is an endangered species of ants endemic to Madagascar. Workers of this species are blind. The spe ...
'' of Madagascar.
As food
Ants and their larvae are eaten in different parts of the world. The eggs of two species of ants are used in Mexican ''
escamoles
Escamoles (; nah, azcamolli, from ''azcatl'' 'ant' and ''molli'' 'puree'), known colloquially as ''Mexican caviar'' or ''insect caviar'', are the edible larvae and pupae of ants of the species '' Liometopum apiculatum'' and '' L. occidentale var ...
''. They are considered a form of insect
caviar
Caviar (also known as caviare; from fa, خاویار, khâvyâr, egg-bearing) is a food consisting of salt-cured roe of the family Acipenseridae. Caviar is considered a delicacy and is eaten as a garnish or a spread. Traditionally, the te ...
and can sell for as much as US$50 per kg going up to US$200 per kg (as of 2006) because they are seasonal and hard to find. In the Colombian department of
Santander
Santander may refer to:
Places
* Santander, Spain, a port city and capital of the autonomous community of Cantabria, Spain
* Santander Department, a department of Colombia
* Santander State, former state of Colombia
* Santander de Quilichao, a m ...
, ''hormigas culonas'' (roughly interpreted as "large-bottomed ants") ''
Atta laevigata
''Atta laevigata'' ( Smith, 1858) is one of about a dozen species of leafcutter ants in the genus '' Atta'', found from Venezuela and south to Paraguay. This species is one of the largest leafcutter species, and can be recognized by the smooth ...
'' are toasted alive and eaten. In areas of
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, and throughout
Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
and
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...
, a paste of the green weaver ant (''
Oecophylla smaragdina
''Oecophylla smaragdina'' (common names include Asian weaver ant, weaver ant, green ant, green tree ant, semut rangrang, semut kerangga, and orange gaster) is a species of arboreal ant found in tropical Asia and Australia. These ants form colon ...
'') is served as a condiment with curry. Weaver ant eggs and larvae, as well as the ants, may be used in a
Thai salad
Salads that are internationally known as Thai salads with a few exceptions fall into four main preparation methods. In Thai cuisine these are called ''yam, tam, lap'' and ''phla''. A few other dishes can also be regarded as being a salad.
Overvi ...
, ''yam'' ( th, ยำ), in a dish called ''yam khai mot daeng'' ( th, ยำไข่มดแดง) or red ant egg salad, a dish that comes from the
Issan
Northeast Thailand or Isan (Isan/ th, อีสาน, ; lo, ອີສານ; also written as Isaan, Isarn, Issarn, Issan, Esan, or Esarn; from Pali ''īsānna'' or Sanskrit ईशान्य ''īśānya'' "northeast") consists of 20 provin ...
or north-eastern region of Thailand. Saville-Kent, in the ''Naturalist in Australia'' wrote "Beauty, in the case of the green ant, is more than skin-deep. Their attractive, almost sweetmeat-like translucency possibly invited the first essays at their consumption by the human species". Mashed up in water, after the manner of lemon squash, "these ants form a pleasant acid drink which is held in high favor by the natives of North Queensland, and is even appreciated by many European palates".
In his ''First Summer in the Sierra'',
John Muir
John Muir ( ; April 21, 1838December 24, 1914), also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks", was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist ...
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
ate the tickling, acid gasters of the large jet-black
carpenter ant
Carpenter ants (''Camponotus'' spp.) are large () ants indigenous to many forested parts of the world.
They build nests inside wood consisting of galleries chewed out with their mandibles or jaws, preferably in dead, damp wood. However, unl ...
s. The Mexican Indians eat the repletes, or living honey-pots, of the
honey ant
Honeypot ants, also called honey ants, are ants which have specialised workers (repletes, plerergates, or rotunds) that are gorged with food to the point that their abdomens swell enormously. Other ants then extract nourishment from them, through ...
(''
Myrmecocystus
''Myrmecocystus'' is a North American genus of ants in the subfamily Formicinae. It is one of five genera that includes honeypot ants. Worker ants keep and tend plerergates, which are other ants that store large quantities of nutritious fluid i ...
'').
As pests
Some ant species are considered as pests, primarily those that occur in human habitations, where their presence is often problematic. For example, the presence of ants would be undesirable in sterile places such as hospitals or kitchens. Some species or genera commonly categorized as pests include the
Argentine ant
The Argentine ant (''Linepithema humile''), formerly ''Iridomyrmex humilis'', is an ant native to northern Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and southern Brazil. It is an invasive species that has been established in many Mediterranean c ...
yellow crazy ant
The yellow crazy ant (''Anoplolepis gracilipes''), also known as the long-legged ant or Maldive ant, is a species of ant, thought to be native to West Africa or Asia. They have been accidentally introduced to numerous places in the world's trop ...
,
banded sugar ant
The banded sugar ant (''Camponotus consobrinus''), also known as the sugar ant, is a species of ant native to Australia. A member of the genus ''Camponotus'' in the subfamily Formicinae, it was species description, described by German entomolog ...
,
pharaoh ant
The pharaoh ant (''Monomorium pharaonis'') is a small (2 mm) yellow or light brown, almost transparent ant notorious for being a major indoor nuisance pest, especially in hospitals. A cryptogenic species, it has now been introduced to vi ...
red imported fire ant
The red imported fire ant (''Solenopsis invicta''), also known as the fire ant or RIFA, is a species of ant native to South America. A member of the genus '' Solenopsis'' in the subfamily Myrmicinae, it was described by Swiss entomologist Fel ...
, and European fire ant. Some ants will raid stored food, some will seek water sources, others may damage indoor structures, some may damage agricultural crops directly or by aiding sucking pests. Some will sting or bite. The adaptive nature of ant colonies make it nearly impossible to eliminate entire colonies and most pest management practices aim to control local populations and tend to be temporary solutions. Ant populations are managed by a combination of approaches that make use of chemical, biological, and physical methods. Chemical methods include the use of insecticidal bait which is gathered by ants as food and brought back to the nest where the poison is inadvertently spread to other colony members through
trophallaxis
Trophallaxis () is the transfer of food or other fluids among members of a community through mouth-to-mouth ( stomodeal) or anus-to-mouth ( proctodeal) feeding. Along with nutrients, trophallaxis can involve the transfer of molecules such as pher ...
. Management is based on the species and techniques may vary according to the location and circumstance.
In science and technology
Observed by humans since the dawn of history, the behaviour of ants has been documented and the subject of early writings and fables passed from one century to another. Those using scientific methods, myrmecologists, study ants in the laboratory and in their natural conditions. Their complex and variable social structures have made ants ideal model organisms.
Ultraviolet vision
Tetrachromacy (from Greek ''tetra'', meaning "four" and ''chromo'', meaning "color") is the condition of possessing four independent channels for conveying color information, or possessing four types of cone cell in the eye. Organisms with te ...
was first discovered in ants by
Sir John Lubbock
John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, 4th Baronet, (30 April 183428 May 1913), known as Sir John Lubbock, 4th Baronet from 1865 until 1900, was an English banker, Liberal politician, philanthropist, scientist and polymath. Lubbock worked in his fa ...
in 1881. Studies on ants have tested hypotheses in
ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...
and
sociobiology
Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to examine and explain social behavior in terms of evolution. It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics. Within ...
, and have been particularly important in examining the predictions of theories of
kin selection
Kin selection is the evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even when at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Kin altruism can look like altruistic behaviour whose evolution i ...
and
evolutionarily stable strategies
An evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) is a strategy (or set of strategies) that is ''impermeable'' when adopted by a population in adaptation to a specific environment, that is to say it cannot be displaced by an alternative strategy (or set o ...
. Ant colonies may be studied by rearing or temporarily maintaining them in '' formicaria'', specially constructed glass framed enclosures. Individuals may be tracked for study by marking them with dots of colours.
The successful techniques used by ant colonies have been studied in computer science and robotics to produce distributed and fault-tolerant systems for solving problems, for example
Ant colony optimization
In computer science and operations research, the ant colony optimization algorithm (ACO) is a probabilistic technique for solving computational problems which can be reduced to finding good paths through graphs. Artificial ants stand for multi ...
and
Ant robotics Ant robotics is a special case of swarm robotics. Swarm robots are simple (and hopefully, therefore cheap) robots with limited sensing and computational capabilities. This makes it feasible to deploy teams of swarm robots and take advantage of the r ...
. This area of biomimetics has led to studies of ant locomotion, search engines that make use of "foraging trails", fault-tolerant storage, and networking algorithms.
As pets
From the late 1950s through the late 1970s, ant farms were popular educational children's toys in the United States. Some later commercial versions use transparent gel instead of soil, allowing greater visibility at the cost of stressing the ants with unnatural light.
In culture
Anthropomorphised
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.
Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...
ants have often been used in fables and children's stories to represent industriousness and cooperative effort. They also are mentioned in religious texts. In the Book of Proverbs in the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...
, ants are held up as a good example of hard work and cooperation.
Aesop
Aesop ( or ; , ; c. 620–564 BCE) was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as ''Aesop's Fables''. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales c ...
did the same in his fable
The Ant and the Grasshopper
The Ant and the Grasshopper, alternatively titled The Grasshopper and the Ant (or Ants), is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 373 in the Perry Index. The fable describes how a hungry grasshopper begs for food from an ant when winter comes and is ...
. In the
Quran
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , s ...
, Sulayman is said to have heard and understood an ant warning other ants to return home to avoid being accidentally crushed by Sulayman and his marching army., In parts of Africa, ants are considered to be the messengers of the deities. Some
Native American mythology
The indigenous peoples of the Americas comprise numerous different cultures. Each has its own mythologies. Some are quite distinct, but certain themes are shared across the cultural boundaries.
Northern America
There is no single mythology o ...
, such as the
Hopi mythology
The Hopi maintain a complex religious and mythological tradition stretching back over centuries. However, it is difficult to definitively state what all Hopis as a group believe. Like the oral traditions of many other societies, Hopi mythology is ...
, considers ants as the very first animals. Ant bites are often said to have curative properties. The sting of some species of ''
Pseudomyrmex
''Pseudomyrmex'' is a genus of stinging, wasp-like ants in the subfamily Pseudomyrmecinae. They are large-eyed, slender ants, found mainly in tropical and subtropical regions of the New World.
Distribution and habitat
''Pseudomyrmex'' is predom ...
'' is claimed to give fever relief. Ant bites are used in the initiation ceremonies of some Amazon Indian cultures as a test of endurance.Ant society has always fascinated humans and has been written about both humorously and seriously. Mark Twain wrote about ants in his 1880 book ''
A Tramp Abroad
''A Tramp Abroad'' is a work of travel literature, including a mixture of autobiography and fictional events, by American author Mark Twain, published in 1880. The book details a journey by the author, with his friend Harris (a character created ...
''. Some modern authors have used the example of the ants to comment on the relationship between society and the individual. Examples are Robert Frost in his poem "Departmental" and T. H. White in his fantasy novel ''
The Once and Future King
''The Once and Future King'' is a collection of fantasy novels by T. H. White about the legend of King Arthur. It is loosely based upon the 1485 work ''Le Morte d'Arthur'' by Sir Thomas Malory. It was first published in 1958 as a collection ...
''. The plot in French entomologist and writer
Bernard Werber
Bernard Werber (born 1961 in Toulouse) is a French science fiction writer, active since the 1990s. He is chiefly recognized for having written the trilogy ''Les Fourmis'', the only one of his novels to have been published in English. This se ...
's ''
Les Fourmis
''Les Fourmis'' (The Ants) trilogy is a three-part novel series by French novelist Bernard Werber.
The novels
*'' Les Fourmis'', Prix des lecteurs de Science et Avenir, 1991, . (lit. ''The Ants'', translated into English as ''Empire of the Ants'') ...
'' science-fiction trilogy is divided between the worlds of ants and humans; ants and their behaviour is described using contemporary scientific knowledge. H.G. Wells wrote about intelligent ants destroying human settlements in Brazil and threatening human civilization in his 1905 science-fiction short story, ''
The Empire of the Ants
"The Empire of the Ants" is a 1905 short story by H. G. Wells about the littleness of humanity and the tenuousness of the dominion ''Homo sapiens'' enjoys on Earth. A 1977 film, ''Empire of the Ants'', was loosely based on Wells' story.
Plot su ...
.'' In more recent times, animated cartoons and 3-D animated films featuring ants have been produced including ''
Antz
''Antz'' is a 1998 American computer-animated adventure comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation (in its debut film) and Pacific Data Images and released by DreamWorks Pictures. It was directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson (in their fe ...
'', ''
A Bug's Life
''A Bug's Life'' is a 1998 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It was the second feature-length film produced by Pixar. Directed by John Lasseter and co-directed by Andrew Stant ...
'', ''
The Ant Bully
''The Ant Bully'' () is a 1999 children's book drawn and written by John Nickle. It is about a young boy named Lucas Nickle (also known as Peanut the Destroyer), who is the title character in the book and who likes to torment ants. It was late ...
'', ''
The Ant and the Aardvark
''The Ant and the Aardvark'' is a series of 17 theatrical short cartoons produced at DePatie–Freleng Enterprises, originally released by United Artists and currently distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1969 to 1971.
Plot
The cartoon se ...
Atom Ant
Atom Ant is a cartoon ant and superhero, created by Hanna-Barbera in 1965. Atom costarred in ''The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show'' (sharing top billing with Secret Squirrel). In syndication, Atom Ant aired alongside '' Precious Pupp'' and '' The ...
E. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, entomologist and writer. According to David Attenborough, Wilson was the world's leading expert in his specialty of myrmecology, the study of an ...
wrote a short story, "Trailhead" in 2010 for ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' magazine, which describes the life and death of an ant-queen and the rise and fall of her colony, from an ants' point of view. The French neuroanatomist, psychiatrist and
eugenicist
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
Auguste Forel
Auguste-Henri Forel (1 September 1848 – 27 July 1931) was a Swiss myrmecologist, neuroanatomist, psychiatrist and eugenicist, notable for his investigations into the structure of the human brain and that of ants. For example, he is considere ...
believed that ant societies were models for human society. He published a five volume work from 1921 to 1923 that examined ant biology and society.
In the early 1990s, the video game ''
SimAnt
''SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony'' is a 1991 life simulation video game by Maxis and the company's third product, focusing on ants. It was designed by Will Wright. In 1992, it was named "Best Simulation Game" at the Software Publishers Ass ...
'', which simulated an ant colony, won the 1992 Codie award for "Best Simulation Program".
Ants also are quite popular inspiration for many
science-fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
insectoid An insectoid is an insect-like creature.
Insectoid may refer to:
* Insectoid robot
* Insectoids in science fiction
{{dab ...
Them!
''Them!'' is a 1954 American black-and-white science fiction film, science fiction monster film from Warner Bros. Pictures, produced by David Weisbart, directed by Gordon Douglas (director), Gordon Douglas, and starring James Whitmore, Edmund ...
'' and ''
Empire of the Ants
"The Empire of the Ants" is a 1905 short story by H. G. Wells about the littleness of humanity and the tenuousness of the dominion ''Homo sapiens'' enjoys on Earth. A 1977 film, '' Empire of the Ants'', was loosely based on Wells' story.
Plot ...
,''
Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics is an American comic book publishing, publisher and the flagship property of Marvel Entertainment, a divsion of The Walt Disney Company since September 1, 2009. Evolving from Timely Comics in 1939, ''Magazine Management/Atlas Co ...
' super hero
Ant-Man
Ant-Man is the name of several superheroes appearing in books published by Marvel Comics. Created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby, Ant-Man's first appearance was in ''Tales to Astonish'' #27 (January 1962) but first appeared in cost ...
, and ants mutated into super-intelligence in '' Phase IV''. In computer
strategy games
A strategy game or strategic game is a game (e.g. a board game) in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous, decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome. Almost all strategy games require internal decisio ...
, ant-based species often benefit from increased production rates due to their single-minded focus, such as the Klackons in the ''
Master of Orion
''Master of Orion'' (abbreviated as MoO) is a turn-based, 4X science fiction strategy game in which the player leads one of ten races to dominate the galaxy through a combination of diplomacy and conquest while developing technology, exploring ...
'' series of games or the ChCht in ''
Deadlock II
''Deadlock II: Shrine Wars'' is a science fiction turn-based strategy video game developed by Cyberlore Studios and published by Accolade, released on February 25, 1998 as a sequel to '' Deadlock: Planetary Conquest''. The game allows the play ...
''. These characters are often credited with a hive mind, a common misconception about ant colonies.
See also
*
Ant venom
Ant venom is any of, or a mixture of, irritants and toxins inflicted by ants. Most ants spray or inject a venom, the main constituent of which is formic acid only in the case of subfamily Formicinae.
Ant stings
Of all extant ant species, about 7 ...
*
Glossary of ant terms
This is a glossary of terms used in the descriptions of ants.
A
B
D
E
F
G
H
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
W
See also ...
*
International Union for the Study of Social Insects The International Union for the Study of Social Insects has at its purpose to promote and encourage the study of social insects and other social organisms in the broadest sense. Both research and the dissemination of knowledge about social insects ...
* ''
Myrmecological News
''Myrmecological News'' (previous name: Myrmecologische Nachrichten) is an independent, international, non-profit, peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal devoted to all aspects of ant research. In a mix of research and review articles, all f ...
'' (journal)
*
Task allocation and partitioning of social insects Task allocation and partitioning is the way that tasks are chosen, assigned, subdivided, and coordinated within a colony of social insects. Task allocation and partitioning gives rise to the division of labor often observed in social insect colonies ...
National Pest Management Association
The National Pest Management Association (NPMA), is a non-profit trade association founded in 1933 that represents the interests of the professional pest management and pest control industries in the United States.Ant Genera of the World – distribution maps