ants

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Ant, common name for members of a family of about ,000 species of insects that live in highly organized societies called colonies. Ant colonies have elaborate social structures in which the various activities necessary for feeding, shelter, and reproduction of the colony are divided among specially adapted individuals.


ANT SPECIES


Ants belong to an order of insects called the Hymenoptera, a group that also includes bees, wasps, and sawflies. Some species of wasp and bees resemble ants in that they live in colonies and are therefore said to be social, but ants are the only hymenopterans in which every species is social. Ants are distinguished from other hymenopterans in that they have bent, or elbowed


TYPES OF ANTS


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Scientists classify the 15,000 species of ants according to the exact shapes of the parts of their bodies, such as legs, antennae (feelers), and jaws. We can group ants more simply by the way the live. Such groups include many different kinds of ants.


Harvester Ants


Harvester Ants live in warm, dry, sandy places. With their jaws they pick up seeds or cut them from weeds and grasses. They store the kernels inside their nests and throw the husks outside the entrances. Sometimes they throw seeds away by mistake. Then the seeds may grow in a ring around the entrance just as if they had been planted. If the stored seeds get damp, the ants spread them in the sun to dry.


Harvester ants are long-legged, red or black ants, often 1/ inch (8 mm.), long. Most have a painful sting. Harvester ants are especially common in the southwestern United States, but live as far east as Kansas. You can sometimes see the mounds of their nests beside the highways as you drive along in your car.


Honey Ants


Honey Ants live on sweet juices. Some collect the juices from flowers. Others collect honeydew, the thin sirup that certain plant-sucking insects drop from their abdomens. Leafhoppers, treehoppers, and aphids (plant lice) are among the insects that produce





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honeydew. One kind of honey ant uses the sweet liquid that oozes from insect galls on oak trees.


Sometimes plants are not green and the plant-sucking insects go away or die. The ants cannot find enough food. To prepare for such times, the ants store honey in their nests. The ants do not make cups of wax or paper as bee and wasps do. Instead, they use their own bodies to store the honey. A few young ants keep swallowing honey until they become round as peas. They are too fat to walk or work. These “honey-pots” hang from the ceiling of the nest. They drink more and more sweet juice. Soon they are unable to move because of the size of their swollen abdomens. For the rest of their lives, they hang by their feet from the ceiling. When hungry ants come for food, the storage ants give up honey through their mouths. When the colony has plenty of food, the other ants fill up the honey-pot ants again. A large nest may have as many 00 of these living food-storage tanks.


Fire Ants


The fire ant was accidentally brought to Alabama from southern Brazil around 140. It was spread further in nursery plants and sod, and now occurs in most of the southwestern United States. The fire ant depends on human disturbance of natural landscapes it constructs its earthen mounds in lawns, roadsides, and pastures. Generally regarded as a pest, the fire ant can be determined to some forms of agriculture, but beneficial to others. Moreover, it is an energetic stinger and may cause medical problems in people sensitive to its sting.


Fire ant colonies contain no to about 00,000 workers. They feed primarily on insects, honeydew, and various scavenged foods. Each colony defends a territory of about 186 sq m (roughly ,000 sq ft) against its neighbors, limiting the number of colonies that can share a piece of land. The workers travel to all parts of their territory in underground tunnels that radiate out from the central mound. Almost all traffic moves in these tunnels; it is only within the last few centimeters of their destination that foraging workers emerge from the tunnels.


Fire ants exist in two social forms with very different ways of life. Colonies of the single-queen form are simple families that are territorial, reproduce by sending out winged queens to start new colonies, and have workers that vary greatly in size. In contrast, each mound of the multi-queen form contains many unrelated families, is not territorial, and reaches much higher populations. The ecological impact of the multiple queen form is much greater than that of the single-queen form, reducing the diversity of native ants and other insects.


Army Ants and Driver Ants


Army ants create nomadic hunting colonies, many of which live entirely underground. One of the best known army ants is the Burchell’s army ant, found in Central and South


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America. In this species, colonies of about 500,000 workers, all of whom are blind, send out long raiding columns each day to collect prey, which are commonly other insects or spiders. The columns of hunting ants form a swarm that covers the forest floor, flushing prey from hiding. They then use their mandibles to kill and dismember their victims. These huge colonies consume so much available prey in a given area that they need to be constantly on the move to find more food.


In place of permanent nest structures, army ant workers grasp one another’s legs to form hanging sheets of ants, called bivouacs. Within these living nests, army ants protect and feed the queen and her young. The colony moves to a new bivouac site every night until the larvae pupate and no longer need feeding. Then the colony stays in one nest for about three weeks while the queen lays about 100,000 to 000,000 eggs in just a few days. After these eggs hatch, the colony resumes its nomadic life.


Army ants found in Africa are called driver ants. Driver ants form huge colonies, which in some cases consist of between 10 million and 0 million workers. Driver ants have extremely powerful mandibles. Their massive swarms are capable of immobilizing and killing large prey.


Leafcutter or Parasol Ants


These ants cut pieces from leaves and flowers to carry back to their nests. They look as though they are carrying parasols as they walk along carrying leaves high off the ground. They have large heads and jaws, shiny bodies, and their color ranges from black to rusty brown.


These ants do not eat the leaves. They chew them into a damp mash which they put in special rooms in their nests. A kind of spongy mushroom grows on decying leaves. The ants eat this mushroom and also feed it to their young.


Slave-Making Ants


These ants do not do their own work. They capture ants of different species to work for them. The Amazon ant is one kind that cannot live without slaves. Their jaws are long and sharp, and so curved that they cannot dig nests or even feed themselves.


Some slave-making ants are quite able to their own work. They probably do not intend to capture slaves. They bring home the cocoons or pupae of other ants to eat. Some of these ants hatch before they are eaten. The young ants then go to work as if they belonged in the colony.





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Ants That Keep “Cows”


Some kinds of ants eat honeydew but they do not store it. Instead, these ants take care of insects that produce honeydew and live on plants near the ant nest. These insects provide


food for plants near the ant nest. These insects provide food for the ant colony. The ants keep aphids, leafhoppers, and certain caterpillars for honeydew, just as farmers keep cows for milk. Ants “milk” their “cows” by stroking the insects back with their antennae. The insect then drops honeydew from its abdomen. The ants defend their insect “cows” from enemies. They often carry the insects from one plant to another to find the best feeding places. Some ants even take their “livestock” into their nests during the winter and care for them there.


HABITAT


Ants live on landmasses all over the world, except for the permanently frozen Artic and Antarctic, the coldest mountaintops, and a few islands. They flourish in soil, rotting wood, leaf litter, dead trees, and living trees in such varied habitats as mountains, deserts, swamps, and human homes. Ants are most abundant in the tropical regions. In the rain forests of the Amazon, ants are so numerous that their total weight is about four times the weight of all the area’s mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined.


Ants play crucial roles in the ecosystems in which they live. Many species dig underground nests that have numerous openings and tunnels. Air and water passes into the soil through these passageways, making oxygen and moisture available to the roots of plants. Seed-eating ants remove seeds from plants and transfer them to underground storage chambers within their nests. This activity disperses the seeds, so that some of them can sprout in areas that are distant from the parent plants. Ants of many species feed on other insects, which may be either living or dead. In this way ants can reduce the size of some other insect populations and recycle organic matter. Ants are a source of food for other animals, such as spiders, other insects, woodpeckers, blue jays; toads, salamanders, and turtles; and anteaters, armadillos, and aardvarks. A few and species are considered pests because they sting, invade human houses and yards, or damage wooden buildings.


COLONY LIFE


Ant colonies range in size from a few members to many millions of members. Members of an ant colony typically fall into categories known as castes, each with a different role


The majority of colony members are female workers ants that are unable to mate.


Worker ants do not have wings and perform most of the work of the colony searching for food, nursing young, and defending the colony against ants from other colonies. Queens are larger than worker ants and are the only females of the colony capable of mating. Queens are born with wings which break off after mating. Aside from mating with the queens, males play no social role in colony life and die soon after mating.


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BODY FEATURES





Most ants are between and 10 mm long. Some ants are 0.7 mm in length, and others are nearly cm long. Like other insects, ants have bodies that contain three major segments the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. Scientists use other terms to designate the second two segments of an ant’s body-alitrunk corresponds to the thorax, and gaster corresponds to the abdomen.


The Head


The shape of the ant head varies among different species it may be spherical, triangular, egg-shaped, or rectangular. In all ants, at the back of the head is an opening through which nerves, the beginning part of the digestive tract, and blood pass into the alitrunk.


At the front of the head is the mouth, which is associated with three appendages, or mouthparts. The mandibles sometimes described as jaws, are long and broad, and they are serrated, or toothed, along their inner sides. The mandibles are probably the most important work tool that ants possess. They are used for digging, carrying, collecting food, building nests, fighting and cutting. The other mouth appendages are the maxillae, which is the lower jaw used for chewing foods to extract liquids, and the tongue for sucking up liquid food. The mouthparts also have two pairs of slender palpi these segmented structures resemble a small antennae, which play a role in tasting food.





Most ants have two compound eyes each are made of light-sensitive compartments called ommatidia. Other types of ants have three simple eyes called ocelli on the tops of their heads. Different species have developed sight, but some are completely blind. Vision is rather unimportant to ants because they spend much of their time underground.


At the front of the head is a pair of antennae, which contain organs of taste, smell and touch. Most ants’ antennae are elbow-shaped, somewhat like a human arm. An ant’s main source of information is its pair of antennae. Ants use their antennae to find out about their surroundings.


Alitrunk and Petiole


Joined to the head is the middle part of the body known as the alitrunk. Attached to the alitrunk are three pairs of legs. Each leg is jointed and has a claw at the end; used for gripping hard to grasp surfaces. The legs are not only used for walking and running, but also for more skillful tasks, including handling food and carrying supplies. The two front legs have miniature combs used for cleaning the ant ant its antennae. In males and young queens, the alitrunk holds two pairs of wings inside.


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Just behind the alitrunk is the narrow petiole. The petiole is usually a two-segmented section that appears to be a waist. This body part aids the ant when it is going through winding underground passages.


The Gaster


The gaster is the hindermost section of the ant. The gaster contains the heart, most of the digestive system, the reproductive system and the excretory system. When the ant’s digestive system is full of food, the gaster expands by ballooning out.








DIGESTION


Adult ants are able to digest only liquid foods. Ants that obtain food from solids first have to mix digestive juices into the food to help dissolve it. Then they use their tongues to lap up the resulting juices and semi-liquid food. Inside the mouth any leftover solid foods enter a chamber beneath the mouth opening. Within the chamber lies a series of screens, which filter out the solid food and turn it into a solid pellet that the ant soon removes from its mouth. From the mouth, the food is passed into an organ called the crop. Once the ant reaches the colony it regurgitates most of the food for other workers to eat. A valve called proventriculus in the inner section of the crop lets a trickle of food pass into the ants’ mid-gut, where it is digested.


SOLUTION COMPONENTS


Sucrose was added to deionized water, to obtain sweet flavor.


When mixed with deionized water, Sodium chloride created a salty flavor.


Citric acid added to deionized water, made a sour flavor.


When Caffeine was mixed with deionized water, it resulted a bitter flavor.


Deinonized water was the substance that was considered control.


SUMMARY


Although ants are sometimes considered a household pest, they are able to perform many necessary functions inside ecosystems. They turn soil, move organic matter and soil nutrients, reduce insect populations, serve as food for other animals, disperse seeds, and sometimes pollinate flowers. In agriculture, they are the most important predators of insects, helping to keep pests under control.


Many species dig underground nests with several openings and passageways. Air and water can pass through these tunnels, providing oxygen and moisture for our plant roots. Ants play a very important part in our world.


Americans of the southwestern United States sometimes eat honeypot ants as a sweet treat or a form of medicine. In Europe, various species of ants are intentionally


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introduced to timber forests, where they prey on caterpillars, preventing them from eating leaves on trees. People in the American tropics sometimes welcome army ants in their homes. These people temporarily move out of their homes while the ants sweep through and consume or drive out any pests that may have infested the home.


The activities of ants occasionally bring them into conflicts with humans. A number of ants have become pests, particularly those that have been accidentally transported outside of their natural range. One example is the fire ant. Another ant pest widely transported by humans is the pharaoh’s ant, which is native to North Africa but has spread throughout much of the world. The pharaoh’s ant cannot tolerate cold temperatures, and so in cold climates it lives in human houses and in other large, heated buildings, such as hospitals and factories. Perhaps the most widespread ant pest is the Argentine ant. Carpenter ants, native to North America, live in timber instead of soil. Once, inside a human home, they make their nests within wooden structures, which they hollow out with their sharp mandibles.


Just as ants sometimes cause harm to humans, humans are a source of harm to ants. Little information is available about endangered species of ants, but scientists suspect many species of ants may be in danger of extinction. The most vulnerable ant species are those that live only in a small geographic area and require a specific type of habitat. An example is a type of leafcutter ant that lives in coastal forests in Brazil. Army ants are increasingly threatened by humans. Army ants live in tropical forests and cannot survive in areas where these forests have been destroyed.





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