Ant | Facts & Habitat | Britannica

Natural history

Ants are social insects, and the colony is a family community of which every ant is an integral unit. Apart from the community, any one individual cannot properly function or survive, and the larvae are completely dependent upon the continuous care of the adults. There are generally three castes, or classes, within a colony: queens, males, and workers. Male ants play no part in everyday nest activities. They live only for a short time, occur in limited numbers, and are virtual parasites of the colony, which must feed them. The fertile female, the queen, performs only one task: egg laying. The life cycle of the ant has four stages—egg, larva, pupa, and adult—and typically spans a period of 8 to 10 weeks for worker ants.

At certain times of the year, the winged males and virgin queens fly into the air, where the queen mates with a single male. During the flight he transfers to her seminal receptacle all the sperm she will require for the rest of her life, which may be as long as 15 years. The males die soon afterward, and the fertilized queen establishes a new nest or takes over the current nest. Her wings then drop off, and the bulky wing muscles degenerate, providing nutritive materials from the breakdown of the muscle tissue. As soon as the wings have fallen, her ovaries become functional, and egg laying begins. In primitive species, the queen leaves the nest and forages for food for the larvae. In more advanced forms, the queen rarely leaves the nest. She feeds so-called nutrition eggs or other food stores within her own body to the first brood. The larvae that survive in the nest develop into dwarf workers, which forage outside the nest for food to nourish additional larvae.

The essential work in the ant society—such as building the nest, feeding and tending the brood, and defending the nest—is performed by the workers, all of whom are female. The workers can be differentiated morphologically and physiologically as soldiers, outside workers, inside workers, and nest builders. In the division of labor among some ant forms, highly specialized types of polymorphism have developed. The Cryptocercus ants, for example, make nests in hollow stems of plants, then bore a circular entrance that remains under constant surveillance by special guards whose heads are modified into pluglike structures that fit the entrance. Each guard is relieved after several hours, and another guard takes its place; entrance guards are useless for other tasks. Honey ant repletes are a special type of worker that are fed so much that the size of their abdomens is greatly increased. Unable to walk, they hang as living honey jugs from the ceiling of the nest, to be used as a food source when fresh food is scarce.

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Most ants live in nests, which may be located in the ground or under a rock or built aboveground and made of twigs, sand, or gravel. Many subterranean nests are quite extensive, with a multitude of tunnels and specialized chambers. Carpenter ants (Camponotus) are large black ants common in North America that live in old logs and timbers. Some species live in trees or in the hollow stems of weeds. Weaver ants (genus Oecophylla), found in the tropics of Africa and Asia, make nests of leaves and similar materials held together with silk secreted by the larvae. Dolichoderus, a genus of ants that are found worldwide, glues together bits of animal feces for its nest. The widely distributed pharaoh ant (Monomarium pharaonis), a small yellowish insect, builds its nest either in houses, when found in cool climates, or outdoors, when it occurs in warm climates.

Food

The food of ants consists of both plant and animal substances. Many ants are generalists and utilize a wide range of organic substances for food. Worker ants forage daily, and collected food and water is brought to the larvae and mature ants in the nest. They frequently use scent marks, which they place on their pathways, to find their way back to the nest and direct other colony members to a food source.

Some ant species are hunters and scavengers. Bullet ants, for example, forage for live spiders, frogs, and insects, including grasshoppers, beetles, and katydids, or their carcasses. Certain species, including those of the genus Formica, often eat the eggs and larvae of other ants or those of their own species in other nests. Sahara desert ants (genus Cataglyphis) scavenge for dead insects on the scorching sand and salt-pan terrain of the Sahara; they can tolerate surface temperatures of 60 °C (140 °F) or higher for short periods, making them one of the most heat-tolerant groups of insects known.

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Some species eat the liquid secretions of plants, either directly or indirectly from the bodies of other insects. Many ants collect nectar from floral or extrafloral nectaries, and some utilize resins and saps. A number of ants, known as herder ants (Lasius niger and others), protect and carefully tend to herds of aphids, from which the ants collect honeydew (a by-product of digestion secreted by certain aphids). The honey ants (Myrmecocystus, Camponotus, and others) store honeydew in the distended abdomens of specialized workers. Some genera (Leptothorax) eat the honeydew that has fallen onto the surface of a leaf. The so-called Argentine ant (Iridomyrmex humilis) and many fire ants (Solenopsis) also eat honeydew.

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Harvester ants (Messor, Pogonomyrmex) store grass, seeds, or berries in the nest, whereas ants of the genus Trachymyrmex of South America eat only fungi, which they cultivate in their nests. The Texas leafcutter ant (Atta texana) is a pest that often strips the leaves from plants to provide nourishment for its fungus gardens.

Notable ant behaviors

The social behavior of ants, along with that of honeybees, is the most complex in the insect world. The group is also extremely diverse, with any number of foraging, nesting, and social behaviors.

Acacia ants (Pseudomyrmex ferruginea) inhabit the bullhorn acacia (or bullhorn wattle; Vachellia cornigera). The ants obtain food and shelter, and the acacia depends on the ants for protection from browsing animals, which the ants drive away. Neither member can survive successfully without the other, exemplifying obligative mutualism.

Slave-making ants, of which there are many species, have a variety of methods for “enslaving” the ants of other species. The queen of Bothriomyrmex decapitans of Africa, for example, allows herself to be dragged by Tapinoma ants into their nest. She then bites off the head of the Tapinoma queen and begins laying her own eggs, which are cared for by the “enslaved” Tapinoma workers. Workers of the slave-making ant Protomognathus americanus raid nests of Temnothorax ants, stealing the latter’s pupae. The pupae are raised by P. americanus to serve as slaves, and, because the Temnothorax pupae become imprinted on the chemical odor of the slave-making ants, as adults the captive ants forage and routinely return to the slave-making ant nest.

Some species live in the nests of other species as parasites. In these species the parasite larvae are given food and nourishment by the host workers. Wheeleriella santschii is a parasite in the nests of Monomorium salomonis, the most common ant of northern Africa.

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Army ants, of the subfamily Dorylinae, are nomadic and notorious for the destruction of plant and animal life in their path. The army ants of tropical America (Eciton), for example, travel in columns, eating insects and other invertebrates along the way. Periodically, the colony rests for several days while the queen lays her eggs. As the colony travels, the growing larvae are carried along by the workers. Habits of the African driver ant (Dorylus) are similar.

Key People: E.O. Wilson Charles Henry Turner William Morton Wheeler (Show more) Related Topics: How Are Ants, Wasps, and Bees Related? army ant herder ant tawny crazy ant corn field ant (Show more) See all related content Did you know?

Scientists think the first ants began farming inside their colonies in South American rainforests in the early Tertiary Period, some 55–60 million years ago. In contrast, humans began farming only about 15,000–10,000 years ago.

All of the nearly 300 members of the subtribe Attina, including certain species of the genera Atta, Acromyrmex, Cyphomyrmex, Sericomyrmex, and Trachymyrmex, are farmers that intentionally cultivate fungi in their colonies to consume as food. One of the most well-known of these mutualisms is that of the leafcutter ant (Atta cephalotes), which has evolved a highly developed and intricate farming system for a specific fungus, Leucoagaricus gongylophorus. The ants meticulously cut pieces of leaves from a variety of rainforest plants to bring back to special chambers in their underground nests. The leaves are then chewed into a pulp and serve as a substrate for the fungus. As the fungal crop grows, the worker ants weed out any competing fungi to protect their harvest and utilize antimicrobial substances to inhibit the growth of harmful pathogens. In return for this care, the fungus converts the pulped vegetation into food that sustains the entire ant colony, producing specialized cells (called gongylidia) that are consumed by the ant farmers. Given that the fungus completely relies on ants for its perpetuation and is not found on its own in the wild, some scientists describe it as an ant-domesticated species.