Photos of various species of ants and interesting features of their life

Ants on Earth have more than 12,000 species. They inhabit a wide variety of natural landscapes, adapt to virtually any conditions of existence and manage to become the dominant group of insects almost everywhere. Of course, the ants of each individual species have many features, and it’s not so much about appearance as about the specifics of behavior and the way of life in general. And here even our closest neighbors (from the nearest forest) may be more interesting than the inhabitants of exotic tropics described in the books.

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Among ants there are both record holders in heat resistance and insects-walruses. For example, members of the runner family live in deserts and normally maintain air temperature up to 50 ° C, feeding on insects that die quickly in this heat.And the Kamchatka ant, on the contrary, is experiencing wintering, cooling to -52 ° C, but remaining alive at the same time.

In the photo below - ant-bullet that can withstand deadly temperatures for other insects:

 

Pharaoh ant

Pharaoh ant - one of the most famous person. Especially - a resident of an apartment or a private house. These ants are those tiny pests that run in slender chains along baseboards, occupy bins and haul crumbs from the table and sugar from bedside tables.

In the photo below - ants of this species in the apartment:

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A mixture of acids, which emit pharaoh ants, is deadly for bed bugs. Therefore, in an apartment heavily infected with pharaoh ants, bedbugs almost always die out.

Here are some more photos of pharaoh ants:

Pharaohs an ant is known for its difficulty in removing - not that the extermination of individual foragers in a room, but even the destruction of their separate anthill does not at all mean the removal of ants from a house. The reason for this is in the ability of this species to create a kind of dispersed nests, in each of which it lives or several breeding females and several hundred working ants.

These nests are interconnected and form a huge colony that can occupy several floors in an apartment building. And while the last such nest will not be destroyed, the ants themselves will safely “delight” the owner of the room with their presence.

 

Red Forest Ant

Red forest ants are among the most famous in Russia. It is this species that builds huge anthills up to two meters high in coniferous forests, each of which has several hundred thousand inhabitants.

That red forest ants are depicted in the pictures in school textbooks. The main ration of the red ant is the excretion of aphids, larvae and adults of various forest pests.

In the photo - red forest ant drags a caterpillar into an anthill.

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Scientists estimate that red forest ants, living in a large anthill, for one summer day on average bring in it up to 21 thousand various caterpillars and pupae of pests. But in general, such an anthill protects about 1 ha of coniferous forest.

The red-haired forest ant is an endangered species, the number of which is constantly decreasing. Part of the blame for this lies with the man who is destroying the young anthills and trapping the ants themselves for the preparation of traditional medicine.

 

Reaper Ants - Steppe Workers

Reaper ants are famous for their huge food reserves in anthills. For the winter, they can collect up to a kilogram of seeds and dead insects in a nest, which is enough for a family of several thousand ants to safely winter out in conditions of reduced activity.

Photos of the reaper ants:

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The reaper ants of the years occur in the spring, while in other species this event is timed to the summer months. Due to this evolutionary shift, the fertilized female has the opportunity to establish a new anthill in the still moist soil.

A special feature of reaper ants is that they feed their larvae with milled grains of plants - in most other ants, the larvae feed exclusively on animal food. At the same time, in the anthill of the reapers, the soldiers grind the largest grains with their powerful jaws, and the ants of the smaller caste gnaw the formed pieces, and those individuals that feed the larvae grind the remaining flour into a kind of gruel.

In the picture, the ant reaper carries seeds to the anthill:

 

Ants Bulldogs: Giants of the Ant World

But ants, bulldogs - already representatives of tropical fauna.They are distributed almost exclusively in Australia and are considered to be among the most primitive ants that have much in common with wasps. In the photo - adult ant-bulldog:

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Ants Bulldogs - one of the most large ants in the world. The length of the working ant can reach 3 cm. At the same time, the difference in size between the working ant and the uterus is not as noticeable as that of other ants.

Ants-bulldogs got their name for the huge jaws, with which they get food and ... jump. It is with the force that pushing the jaws off the ground, the ant can jump a distance of up to 30 cm. In the photos below you can well see these powerful jaws:

In addition, bulldog ants swim well. Their larvae feed on their own food, which is brought into the anthill by working ants.

Bulldog ants are dangerous. Every year, several people die from bites in Australia and Tasmania - these insects have a sting, and their venom causes a strong allergic reaction and can lead to anaphylactic shock.

 

Nomadic Ants: The Fear of All the Tropics

Nomadic ants are one of the most famous.They are also called killer ants because during their movements they destroy all arthropods, small rodents and reptiles in those territories where they find themselves.

Pictures of nomadic ants:

The main feature of nomadic ants is their lack of an anthill — a colony of several hundred thousand individuals either forms a temporary shelter in the form of a ball of bonded workers, or finds a hole or cavity under stones, in which the uterus will lay eggs for several weeks. After growing a certain number of young ants and depleting food stocks, the colony is removed from the place and moves to another, more feeding site.

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The womb of a nomadic ant is striking in its fertility: in Asian species, it lays up to 130 thousand eggs per day - about three eggs every two seconds. No other insect has such fertility.

 

Carpenter Ants

There are many species among the borer ants that are familiar to us — those very ants that run along the trunks of trees and collect honey dew from the leaves. Drestovtsev they are called for the fact that they often arrange their nests in the stumps or under the bark of living trees,diligently gnawing in the wood moves and chambers. Because of such activities, they can cause damage to forestry.

Photos of carpenter ants:

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Among carpenter ants there is the largest ant in the fauna of Russia - uterus Red-breast ant can reach a length of 2 cm. It is this ant that is shown in the picture below.

 

Amazon ants and their slaves

The amazon ants are a very specific group of species of ants, in which, in principle, no working individuals are hatching. Their offspring are either future wombs or soldiers. To search for food and care for their larvae, either the Amazonian womb itself, or a detachment of its soldiers, attack the anthills of more peaceful ant species and steal the larvae and pupae from there. The working ants that emerged from them perceive the invaders as parents, and in the anthill of the Amazons they do all the routine work.

Photos of amazon ants:

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Some species of Amazon ants are very highly specialized: they can abduct larvae and pupae of only one donor species. Of course, the ants attacked by the Amazons defend their broods, and the mortality rate among the Amazons themselves is very high.

In the photo, the Amazon ant carries the stolen larva to its anthill:

Among the Amazons there are species that live in Russia.

 

Leafcutter ants are human competitors

Leaf cutter ants are one of the few creatures in the world who are engaged in agriculture, and at a very high technological level. The working ants of these species gnaw the pieces of leaves, take them to the anthill, where these leaves chew on other ants, mix them with saliva and infect with spores of a special fungus.

It is the developing mycelium that these ants eat. And besides, their saliva contains a large number of antibiotics that prevent the development of parasitic fungi and bacteria dangerous for the mycelium.

Photos of leaf cutter ants:

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In the colony of leaf cutter ants, there are 7 castes of individuals that differ in appearance and behavior. The difference in size between the smallest working ant and soldier can reach 200 times. In this case, in general, all the ants of the family perform up to 29 different unique operations in the preparation of food.

In the picture below - a line of leaf cutter ants:

In habitats, large colonies can destroy the leaf cover on large trees, so they are actively fighting near plantations and gardens.

 

Parasitic ants

There are a lot of these species, and they parasitize differently, but, as a rule, at the expense of other ants. For example, in the nests of the reaper ants, small ants that never come to the surface and feed on the reapers themselves can parasitize.

Similar parasites are found in leaf-cutting ants, forest ants, and tree-growing ants. As a rule, parasitic ants are very small, and in their colonies rarely more than a few hundred individuals. They build their anthill near the anthill of the host species or directly between its chambers.

They are very similar to ants both in appearance and in the nature of their social structure, termites. However, these insects are not to be confused: termites are systematically closer to cockroaches, and ants are closer to wasps and bees. Nevertheless, the ability to build impressive structures and various features of biology between these insects is very much in common.

 

An interesting video: the battle between ants and wasps over prey

 

Spider against ant