An ant colony is a population of a single ant species able to maintain its complete lifecycle. Ant colonies are eusocial, communal, and efficiently organized and are very much like those found in other social Hymenoptera, though the various groups of these developed sociality independently through convergent evolution.[1] The typical colony consists of one or more egg-laying queens, numerous sterile females (workers, soldiers) and, seasonally, many winged sexual males and females.[2] In order to establish new colonies, ants undertake flights that occur at species-characteristic times of the day.[3] Swarms of the winged sexuals (known as alates) depart the nest in search of other nests.[4] The males die shortly thereafter, along with most of the females.[5] A small percentage of the females survive to initiate new nests.[6]
The term "ant colony" refers to a population of workers, reproductive individuals, and brood that live together, cooperate, and treat one another non-aggressively. Often this comprises the genetically related progeny from a single queen, although this is not universal across ants.[6] The name "ant farm" is commonly given to ant nests that are kept in formicaria, isolated from their natural habitat. These formicaria are formed so scientists can study by rearing or temporarily maintaining them.[7][8] Another name is "formicary", which derives from the Medieval Latin word formīcārium. The word also derives from formica.[9] "Ant nests" are the physical spaces in which the ants live. These can be underground, in trees, under rocks, or even inside a single acorn.[6] The name "ant hill" (or "anthill") applies to aboveground nests where the workers pile sand or soil outside the entrance, forming a large mound.[10]
Colony sizeEdit
Colony size (the number of individuals that make up the colony) is very important to ants: it can affect how they forage, how they defend their nests, how they mate, and even their physical appearances. Body size is often seen as the most important factor in shaping the natural history[clarification needed] of non-colonial organisms; similarly, colony size is key in influencing how colonial organisms are collectively organized.[11][6] Colonies have a significant range of sizes: some are just several[clarification needed] ants living in a twig, while others are super-colonies with many millions of workers. Within a single ant colony, seasonal variation may be huge. For example, in the ant Dolichoderus mariae, one colony can shift from around 300 workers in the summer to over 2,000 workers per queen in the winter.[12] Genetics and environmental factors can cause the variation among different colonies of a single species to be even bigger. Different ant species, even those in the same genus, may have enormous colony size disparities: Formica yessensis has colony sizes that are reported to be 306 million workers while Formica fusca colonies sometimes comprise only 500 workers.[11]
A supercolony occurs when many ant colonies over a large area unite. They still continue to recognize genetic differences in order to mate, but the different colonies within the super colony avoid aggression.[13] Until 2000, the largest known ant supercolony was on the Ishikari coast of Hokkaidō, Japan. The colony was estimated to contain 306 million worker ants and one million queen ants living in 45,000 nests interconnected by underground passages over an area of 2.7 km2 (670 acres).[14] In 2000, an enormous supercolony of Argentine ants was found in Southern Europe (report published in 2002). Of 33 ant populations tested along the 6,004-kilometre (3,731 mi) stretch along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts in Southern Europe, 30 belonged to one supercolony with estimated millions of nests and billions of workers, interspersed with three populations of another supercolony.[15] The researchers claim that this case of unicoloniality cannot be explained by loss of their genetic diversity due to the genetic bottleneck of the imported ants.[15] In 2009, it was demonstrated that the largest Japanese, Californian and European Argentine ant supercolonies were in fact part of a single global "megacolony".[16] This intercontinental megacolony represents the most populous recorded animal society on earth, other than humans.
Another supercolony, measuring approximately 100 km (62 mi) wide, was found beneath Melbourne, Australia in 2004.[17]
Organizational terminologyEdit
The following terminology is commonly used among myrmecologists to describe the behaviors demonstrated by ants when founding and organizing colonies:[6]: p. 209
Monogyny
Establishment of an ant colony under a single egg-laying queen.
Polygyny
Establishment of an ant colony under multiple egg-laying queens.
Oligogyny
Establishment of a polygynous colony where the multiple egg-laying queens remain far apart from one another in the nest.
Haplometrosis
Establishment of a colony by a single queen.
Pleometrosis
Establishment of a colony by multiple queens.
Monodomy
Establishment of a colony at a single nest site.
Polydomy
Establishment of a colony across multiple nest sites.
Colony structureEdit
Ant colonies have a complex social structure. Ants’ jobs are determined and can be changed by age. As ants grow older their jobs move them farther from the queen, or center of the colony. Younger ants work within the nest protecting the queen and young. Sometimes, a queen is not present and is replaced by egg-laying workers. These worker ants can only lay haploid eggs producing sterile offspring.[18] Despite the title of queen, she doesn't delegate the tasks to the worker ants; however, the ants choose their tasks based on individual preference.[2] Ants as a colony also work as a collective "super mind". Ants can compare areas and solve complex problems by using information gained by each member of the colony to find the best nesting site or to find food.[2] Some social-parasitic species of ants, known as the slave-making ant, raid and steal larvae from neighboring colonies.[19]
ExcavationEdit
Ant hill art is a growing collecting hobby. It involves pouring molten metal (typically non-toxic zinc or aluminum), plaster or cement down an ant colony mound acting as a mold and upon hardening, one excavates the resulting structure.[20] In some cases, this involves a great deal of digging.[21] The casts are often used for research and education purposes but many are simply given or sold to natural history museums or sold as folk art or as souvenirs. Usually, the hills are chosen after the ants have abandoned so as to not kill any ants; however in the Southeast United States, pouring into an active colony of invasivefire ants is a novel way to eliminate them.[citation needed]
An ant-bed, in its simplest form, is a pile of soil, sand, pine needles, manure, urine, or clay or a composite of these and other materials that build up at the entrances of the subterranean dwellings of ant colonies as they are excavated.[22] A colony is built and maintained by legions of worker ants, who carry tiny bits of dirt and pebbles in their mandibles and deposit them near the exit of the colony.[23] They normally deposit the dirt or vegetation at the top of the hill to prevent it from sliding back into the colony, but in some species, they actively sculpt the materials into specific shapes and may create nest chambers within the mound.[citation needed]
^Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences (1999). "Convergent evolution, superefficient teams and tempo in Old and New World army ants". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences. Royal Society Publishing. 266 (1429): 1697–1701. doi:10.1098/rspb.1999.0834. PMC1690180.
^ abc"Ant Colony – ASU – Ask A Biologist". askabiologist.asu.edu. 16 April 2010.
^"Seasonal and nocturnal periodicities in ant nuptial flights in the Tropics (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)". ResearchGate. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
^Wilson, E. O. (1957). "The Organization of a Nuptial Flight of the Ant Pheidole Sttarches Wheeler". Psyche: A Journal of Entomology. 64 (2): 46–50. doi:10.1155/1957/68319. ISSN 0033-2615.
^Loiácono, Marta; Margaría, Cecilia. "Hymenoptera (Sawflies, Ants, Bees, and Wasps)". Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia. 3 (2): 405–425. Retrieved 8 December 2018.
^"Word Mark: ANT FARM (renewal)". United States Patent and Trademark Office. 8 January 2009. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
^Kennedy, C.H. (1951). "Myrmecological technique. IV. Collecting ants by rearing pupae". The Ohio Journal of Science. 51 (1): 17–20. hdl:1811/3802.
^"Formicary". Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
^Claybourne, A. (2013). A Colony of Ants: and Other Insect Groups. Oxford, UK: Raintree Publishers. p. 12. ISBN978-1-4062-5563-8.
^ abBurchill, A. T.; Moreau, C. S. (5 February 2016). "Colony size evolution in ants: macroevolutionary trends". Insectes Sociaux. 63 (2): 291–298. doi:10.1007/s00040-016-0465-3. S2CID 4817407.
^Laskis, Kristina O.; Tschinkel, Walter R. (February 2009). "The Seasonal Natural History of the Ant, Dolichoderus mariae, in Northern Florida". Journal of Insect Science. 9 (2): 2. doi:10.1673/031.009.0201. PMC3011848. PMID 19611227.
^Steiner, Florian M.; Schlick-Steiner, Birgit C.; Moder, Karl; Stauffer, Christian; Arthofer, Wolfgang; Buschinger, Alfred; Espadaler, Xavier; Christian, Erhard; Einfinger, Katrin (2007). "Abandoning Aggression but Maintaining Self-Nonself Discrimination as a First Stage in Ant Supercolony Formation". Current Biology. 17 (21): 1903–1907. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2007.09.061. PMID 17964165.
^Higashi, S. and K. Yamauchi. "Influence of a Supercolonial Ant Formica (Formica) yessensis Forel on the Distribution of Other Ants in Ishikari Coast". Japanese Journal of Ecology, No. 29, 257–64, 1979.
^ abTatiana Giraud, Jes S. Pedersen, and Laurent Kelle. Evolution of supercolonies: The Argentine ants of southern Europe. The National Academy of Sciences, 2002.
^Ant mega-colony takes over world BBC Wednesday, 1 July 2009 10:41 GMT.
^Peeters, Christian (1 October 1991). "The occurrence of sexual reproduction among ant workers". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 44 (2): 141–152. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.1991.tb00612.x. ISSN 0024-4066.
^Foitzik, S.; DeHeer, C. J.; Hunjan, D. N.; Herbers, J. M. (7 June 2001). "Coevolution in host-parasite systems: Behavioural strategies of slave-making ants and their hosts". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 268 (1472): 1139–1146. doi:10.1098/rspb.2001.1627. ISSN 0962-8452. PMC1088719. PMID 11375101.
^Anthill Art (12 March 2015). "Largest Aluminum Fire Ant Colony Cast So Far (Cast #072)". Archived from the original on 22 December 2021 – via YouTube.
^KYLYKaHYT (24 December 2010). "Giant Ant Hill Excavated". Archived from the original on 22 December 2021 – via YouTube.
^McCook, Henry C. (1877). "Mound-Making Ants of the Alleghenies, Their Architecture and Habits". Transactions of the American Entomological Society. 6: 253–296. doi:10.2307/25076323. hdl:2027/hvd.32044072277692. JSTOR 25076323.
^Gordon, Deborah M. (January–February 1995). "The Development of Organization in an Ant Colony". American Scientist. 83 (1): 50–57. Bibcode:1995AmSci..83...50G. JSTOR 29775362.
External linksEdit
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ant nests.
Journal of Insect Science: The nest architecture of the Florida harvester ant
October 15, 2023
colony, anthill, redirects, here, novel, anthill, novel, colony, population, single, species, able, maintain, complete, lifecycle, colonies, eusocial, communal, efficiently, organized, very, much, like, those, found, other, social, hymenoptera, though, various. Anthill redirects here For the novel see Anthill A Novel An ant colony is a population of a single ant species able to maintain its complete lifecycle Ant colonies are eusocial communal and efficiently organized and are very much like those found in other social Hymenoptera though the various groups of these developed sociality independently through convergent evolution 1 The typical colony consists of one or more egg laying queens numerous sterile females workers soldiers and seasonally many winged sexual males and females 2 In order to establish new colonies ants undertake flights that occur at species characteristic times of the day 3 Swarms of the winged sexuals known as alates depart the nest in search of other nests 4 The males die shortly thereafter along with most of the females 5 A small percentage of the females survive to initiate new nests 6 Walter R Tschinkel next to a plaster cast of a Pogonomyrmex badius nestAnt hill and ant tracks Oxley Wild Rivers National Park New South Wales Contents 1 Names 2 Colony size 3 Supercolonies 4 Organizational terminology 5 Colony structure 6 Excavation 7 Ant beds 8 See also 9 References 10 External linksNames EditThe term ant colony refers to a population of workers reproductive individuals and brood that live together cooperate and treat one another non aggressively Often this comprises the genetically related progeny from a single queen although this is not universal across ants 6 The name ant farm is commonly given to ant nests that are kept in formicaria isolated from their natural habitat These formicaria are formed so scientists can study by rearing or temporarily maintaining them 7 8 Another name is formicary which derives from the Medieval Latin word formicarium The word also derives from formica 9 Ant nests are the physical spaces in which the ants live These can be underground in trees under rocks or even inside a single acorn 6 The name ant hill or anthill applies to aboveground nests where the workers pile sand or soil outside the entrance forming a large mound 10 Colony size EditColony size the number of individuals that make up the colony is very important to ants it can affect how they forage how they defend their nests how they mate and even their physical appearances Body size is often seen as the most important factor in shaping the natural history clarification needed of non colonial organisms similarly colony size is key in influencing how colonial organisms are collectively organized 11 6 Colonies have a significant range of sizes some are just several clarification needed ants living in a twig while others are super colonies with many millions of workers Within a single ant colony seasonal variation may be huge For example in the ant Dolichoderus mariae one colony can shift from around 300 workers in the summer to over 2 000 workers per queen in the winter 12 Genetics and environmental factors can cause the variation among different colonies of a single species to be even bigger Different ant species even those in the same genus may have enormous colony size disparities Formica yessensis has colony sizes that are reported to be 306 million workers while Formica fusca colonies sometimes comprise only 500 workers 11 Supercolonies EditMain article Ant supercolony A supercolony occurs when many ant colonies over a large area unite They still continue to recognize genetic differences in order to mate but the different colonies within the super colony avoid aggression 13 Until 2000 the largest known ant supercolony was on the Ishikari coast of Hokkaidō Japan The colony was estimated to contain 306 million worker ants and one million queen ants living in 45 000 nests interconnected by underground passages over an area of 2 7 km2 670 acres 14 In 2000 an enormous supercolony of Argentine ants was found in Southern Europe report published in 2002 Of 33 ant populations tested along the 6 004 kilometre 3 731 mi stretch along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts in Southern Europe 30 belonged to one supercolony with estimated millions of nests and billions of workers interspersed with three populations of another supercolony 15 The researchers claim that this case of unicoloniality cannot be explained by loss of their genetic diversity due to the genetic bottleneck of the imported ants 15 In 2009 it was demonstrated that the largest Japanese Californian and European Argentine ant supercolonies were in fact part of a single global megacolony 16 This intercontinental megacolony represents the most populous recorded animal society on earth other than humans Another supercolony measuring approximately 100 km 62 mi wide was found beneath Melbourne Australia in 2004 17 Organizational terminology EditThe following terminology is commonly used among myrmecologists to describe the behaviors demonstrated by ants when founding and organizing colonies 6 p 209 Monogyny Establishment of an ant colony under a single egg laying queen Polygyny Establishment of an ant colony under multiple egg laying queens Oligogyny Establishment of a polygynous colony where the multiple egg laying queens remain far apart from one another in the nest Haplometrosis Establishment of a colony by a single queen Pleometrosis Establishment of a colony by multiple queens Monodomy Establishment of a colony at a single nest site Polydomy Establishment of a colony across multiple nest sites Colony structure EditAnt colonies have a complex social structure Ants jobs are determined and can be changed by age As ants grow older their jobs move them farther from the queen or center of the colony Younger ants work within the nest protecting the queen and young Sometimes a queen is not present and is replaced by egg laying workers These worker ants can only lay haploid eggs producing sterile offspring 18 Despite the title of queen she doesn t delegate the tasks to the worker ants however the ants choose their tasks based on individual preference 2 Ants as a colony also work as a collective super mind Ants can compare areas and solve complex problems by using information gained by each member of the colony to find the best nesting site or to find food 2 Some social parasitic species of ants known as the slave making ant raid and steal larvae from neighboring colonies 19 Excavation EditAnt hill art is a growing collecting hobby It involves pouring molten metal typically non toxic zinc or aluminum plaster or cement down an ant colony mound acting as a mold and upon hardening one excavates the resulting structure 20 In some cases this involves a great deal of digging 21 The casts are often used for research and education purposes but many are simply given or sold to natural history museums or sold as folk art or as souvenirs Usually the hills are chosen after the ants have abandoned so as to not kill any ants however in the Southeast United States pouring into an active colony of invasive fire ants is a novel way to eliminate them citation needed Ant beds EditSee also Termite mound source Nest construction of antsAn ant bed in its simplest form is a pile of soil sand pine needles manure urine or clay or a composite of these and other materials that build up at the entrances of the subterranean dwellings of ant colonies as they are excavated 22 A colony is built and maintained by legions of worker ants who carry tiny bits of dirt and pebbles in their mandibles and deposit them near the exit of the colony 23 They normally deposit the dirt or vegetation at the top of the hill to prevent it from sliding back into the colony but in some species they actively sculpt the materials into specific shapes and may create nest chambers within the mound citation needed See also EditAnt colony optimization a technique in computer science inspired by ant colonies Nuno sa punso a Filipino belief about ant hillsReferences Edit Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B Biological Sciences 1999 Convergent evolution superefficient teams and tempo in Old and New World army ants Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B Biological Sciences Royal Society Publishing 266 1429 1697 1701 doi 10 1098 rspb 1999 0834 PMC 1690180 a b c Ant Colony ASU Ask A Biologist askabiologist asu edu 16 April 2010 Seasonal and nocturnal periodicities in ant nuptial flights in the Tropics Hymenoptera Formicidae ResearchGate Retrieved 12 October 2017 Wilson E O 1957 The Organization of a Nuptial Flight of the Ant Pheidole Sttarches Wheeler Psyche A Journal of Entomology 64 2 46 50 doi 10 1155 1957 68319 ISSN 0033 2615 Loiacono Marta Margaria Cecilia Hymenoptera Sawflies Ants Bees and Wasps Grzimek s Animal Life Encyclopedia 3 2 405 425 Retrieved 8 December 2018 a b c d e Holldobler Bert Wilson Edward O 1990 The Ants Harvard University Press ISBN 0 674 04075 9 Word Mark ANT FARM renewal United States Patent and Trademark Office 8 January 2009 Retrieved 18 January 2014 Kennedy C H 1951 Myrmecological technique IV Collecting ants by rearing pupae The Ohio Journal of Science 51 1 17 20 hdl 1811 3802 Formicary Merriam Webster Online Dictionary Retrieved 19 March 2015 Claybourne A 2013 A Colony of Ants and Other Insect Groups Oxford UK Raintree Publishers p 12 ISBN 978 1 4062 5563 8 a b Burchill A T Moreau C S 5 February 2016 Colony size evolution in ants macroevolutionary trends Insectes Sociaux 63 2 291 298 doi 10 1007 s00040 016 0465 3 S2CID 4817407 Laskis Kristina O Tschinkel Walter R February 2009 The Seasonal Natural History of the Ant Dolichoderus mariae in Northern Florida Journal of Insect Science 9 2 2 doi 10 1673 031 009 0201 PMC 3011848 PMID 19611227 Steiner Florian M Schlick Steiner Birgit C Moder Karl Stauffer Christian Arthofer Wolfgang Buschinger Alfred Espadaler Xavier Christian Erhard Einfinger Katrin 2007 Abandoning Aggression but Maintaining Self Nonself Discrimination as a First Stage in Ant Supercolony Formation Current Biology 17 21 1903 1907 doi 10 1016 j cub 2007 09 061 PMID 17964165 Higashi S and K Yamauchi Influence of a Supercolonial Ant Formica Formica yessensis Forel on the Distribution of Other Ants in Ishikari Coast Japanese Journal of Ecology No 29 257 64 1979 a b Tatiana Giraud Jes S Pedersen and Laurent Kelle Evolution of supercolonies The Argentine ants of southern Europe The National Academy of Sciences 2002 Ant mega colony takes over world BBC Wednesday 1 July 2009 10 41 GMT Super ant colony hits Australia BBC News 2004 Peeters Christian 1 October 1991 The occurrence of sexual reproduction among ant workers Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 44 2 141 152 doi 10 1111 j 1095 8312 1991 tb00612 x ISSN 0024 4066 Foitzik S DeHeer C J Hunjan D N Herbers J M 7 June 2001 Coevolution in host parasite systems Behavioural strategies of slave making ants and their hosts Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 268 1472 1139 1146 doi 10 1098 rspb 2001 1627 ISSN 0962 8452 PMC 1088719 PMID 11375101 Anthill Art 12 March 2015 Largest Aluminum Fire Ant Colony Cast So Far Cast 072 Archived from the original on 22 December 2021 via YouTube KYLYKaHYT 24 December 2010 Giant Ant Hill Excavated Archived from the original on 22 December 2021 via YouTube McCook Henry C 1877 Mound Making Ants of the Alleghenies Their Architecture and Habits Transactions of the American Entomological Society 6 253 296 doi 10 2307 25076323 hdl 2027 hvd 32044072277692 JSTOR 25076323 Gordon Deborah M January February 1995 The Development of Organization in an Ant Colony American Scientist 83 1 50 57 Bibcode 1995AmSci 83 50G JSTOR 29775362 External links Edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ant nests Journal of Insect Science The nest architecture of the Florida harvester ant Myrmedrome a realistic ant colony simulator Winged Ants The Male Dichotomous key to genera of winged male ants in the World Behavioral ecology of mating flight Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Ant colony amp oldid 1177834103, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
