Okorokov Anatoly
There is hardly a person who has not stopped at least once near an anthill, fascinated by such a distant and at the same time inexplicably close to us world of these amazing insects. I decided to learn everything about ants and set a goal for myself: to study the structural features of ants to study the structure of the nest to study professions to study feeding habits to study how ants communicate
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MOU – May Secondary School
named after Evgeniy Leonidovich Chistyakov
All about ants
Head: Illarionova
Larisa Ivanovna, teacher
Primary classes
1. Introduction
2. Structural features of ants
3. Nest structure
4 Professions of ants
5. Ant food
6. Ant communication
7. Conclusion.
Introduction
Ants are one of the most common insects on our Earth. They are found in all natural areas and often live close to home.
In nature, ants cannot be confused with other insects: they are wingless, very active, always looking for something, scurrying around. You rarely see a single ant, even far from its nest; usually there are always many of them.
Scientists view the community of ants as a kind of “superorganism” in which not a single part can live without all the others. An ant placed in a jar quickly dies, even if it has everything for a comfortable existence. He is just a particle, torn out of the whole, and is now doomed to death.
There are about 12,000 species of ants on Earth.
Rationale for the chosen topic
There is hardly a person who has not stopped at least once near an anthill, fascinated by such a distant and at the same time inexplicably close to us world of these amazing insects.
I decided to learn everything about ants and set myself a goal:
- study the structural features of ants
- study the structure of the nest
- explore professions
- study nutritional features
- study how ants communicate
To achieve the goal, I identified the following task:
- Study the literature on this issue
Features of the structure of ants.
Ants belong to the phylum Arthropods, the class Insecta, the order Hymenoptera, and the family Ants. The body is segmented and consists of a head, thorax and abdomen.
Ants have a large head. On the head are a pair of antennae and a pair of compound eyes. Simple eyes, or ocelli, are most often three points on the crown of the head. Complex compound eyes are located on the sides of the head. The number of facets is not the same, in some species there are about a dozen, in others, which have good vision, there are more than a thousand. Antennae - antennae - are sensory organs. They serve the ant to perceive olfactory, tactile and partly taste sensations. The main organ of taste is located in the ant's mouth.
The ant's mouth is not adapted to absorb solid food, but is adapted only to absorb nutrient solutions. In addition to the upper and lower lips, there are two pairs of jaws. The upper pair are mandibles, without which ants cannot live. Ants use them as warriors, as nannies, as builders, and as foragers. In the lower lip, the most important part is considered to be the uvula - the organ of taste and body cleansing, as well as the main instrument for feeding the young and the mutual nutrition of the adult inhabitants of the anthill.
There are three pairs of jointed limbs on the chest. In males and young females, the chest is much more developed than in workers, and bears four wings. The membranous wings of male and female ants are transparent. The wings of the front pair are noticeably larger - longer and wider than the rear ones.
The abdomen is segmented, the first or first two segments are less developed and form a stalk. The stalk, connecting the abdomen with the chest, makes the ant body very flexible. The abdomen, consisting of movably connected dorsal and abdominal half-rings, is capable of increasing in volume. The thing is that in the abdomen there is a goiter - an organ that serves to store and transport food. The abdomen contains poisonous glands associated with the sting. The abdomen of males and females is noticeably larger; the reproductive organs are located here. The outside of the body of ants has a cover consisting of chitin. The chitinous cover is very durable. It protects the ant from mechanical and chemical influences external environment. Ants' defenses include sharp mandibles, poisonous liquid and, in some species, a sting.
Nest structure
The nest of red forest ants consists of aboveground and underground parts. The above-ground part in coniferous forests is constructed from needles, in deciduous forests - from sticks and other small but durable plant particles. On top, the ants form a covering layer of a dome, protecting the anthill from getting wet during rains.
The dome, flooded with rain, remains strong. Water, as a rule, does not penetrate deep into the nest. After rain, the entire structure acquires a new margin of strength in the sun, since the pieces of building material seem to be soldered together.
Inside the ant heap, the plant material is larger - the sticks may have different size, some reach a length of 10cm with a thickness of 5mm. Here, from these building materials, a system of passages and chambers is constructed in which the young are raised. The dome of the anthill is surrounded by an earthen rampart.
An anthill does not end in an anthill. It has thousands of passages underground. These passages can go to a depth of 1-2 m and end in wide cavities. Some are used as a dumping ground, in others young people develop, and still others serve as wintering grounds for ants. The temperature in such cavities - wintering quarters - does not drop below +5 degrees in winter. And when the frosts are raging above, the ants are not afraid and not cold in their house.
Clearly visible paths branch off from large anthills, along which a stream of ants moves from the nest and to the nest. The feeding trails of red wood ants remain constant, as a result, each anthill has its own feeding area.
Professions of ants
The family is the main form of existence of social insects. Consists of reproductive (females, males) and functionally asexual individuals (workers).
Female queens are larger than worker ants; they never leave the nest. Their main function is laying eggs.
The first batch of juveniles turns only into winged males and females, who live in the anthill for a short time, only 2-3 weeks, and then fly out together, mate and found new nests. After swarming, the male ants die. Of all subsequent clutches, only working individuals appear in the anthill.
Worker ants are wingless, underdeveloped females that are not capable of reproduction. Working ants have a reddish-brown head and chest, and a blackish, shiny abdomen. Body length from 4 to 9 mm. It is the worker ants that we see on the anthill in huge numbers.
There is a division of labor between worker ants.
Newly emerged worker ants are nannies, caring for the larvae and feeding the queens.
Older worker ants perform a variety of tasks: they cut up the prey they brought, remove garbage, and build a nest. They then become foragers. Among the foragers, some specialize in hunting, others in obtaining sweet food, and still others carry material to build a nest. The largest worker ants protect the anthill - these are soldiers.
In red wood ants, each forager begins its non-nesting activity on the periphery of the protected territory. Subsequently, it gradually moves to individual search areas closer and closer to the nest, and ends this path on the dome, where the ant serves as an observer.
A family of our ordinary red forest ants at favorable conditions can exist 90 - 100 years. During this time, the family is repeatedly replaced by females, who live a maximum of 15–20 years (this is a record among invertebrates), and to an even greater extent by working ants, who live only 3 years.
Ant food
Red wood ants use mainly protein foods (other insects that are killed and brought to the anthill) and carbohydrates (sugary plant secretions, flowing tree sap, and especially sugar-rich secretions of aphids). The ants feed most of the protein food to the larvae; they feed on carbohydrate food themselves. Ants are characterized by food exchange - tropholaxis. Trophollaxis allows both the nanny and the digger not to be interrupted from their useful activities to search for food - others will take care of it.
Workers - foragers of red forest ants, whose task is to obtain food, during the summer bring to the nest 3,000,000 - 8,000,000 various insects, about 20 buckets of sweet juices, mainly secretions of aphids, and 40,000 - 60,000 seeds of various plants, which are also eaten.
IN summer days The mass of insects brought to an anthill can reach 1 kg.
It is estimated that the ants of a medium anthill protect 0.25 hectares of forest from harmful insects, and up to 1 - 4 hectares of a large anthill.
Ants primarily prey on those insects that reproduce in large quantities in the forest. Massive insects are harmful insects - butterfly caterpillars, sawfly caterpillars, which eat leaves and needles.
Ant communication
When communicating with each other, ants use a variety of signals, mainly by touching each other with their antennae, legs, and heads. Chemical signals are also used.
When looking for the way to the nest, red forest ants use the “language of smells.”
With the help of smell, ants distinguish their nestmates from “strangers”.
It has been noticed that in different cases ants touch, feel, hit each other with their antennae in different ways and change their behavior accordingly. They seem to be explained by peculiar gestures.
The famous Soviet entomologist Pavel Ustinovich Marikovsky noticed more than two dozen signals from ants: “Alien smell!”, “Who are you?”, “Attention!”, “Give me something to eat!”, “Beware!” and others.
When using chemical signals, ants take a defensive pose: they rise high on their hind legs and point the end of their abdomen forward. And you immediately notice a pungent odor: the ant sprayed out a liquid consisting of formic acid and an alarm substance - undecane.
On the roads along which they run from anthill to anthill, ants secrete other, so-called trace substances that allow them not to lose their way.
All ants from the same nest have a common smell, which allows them to recognize each other and prevent ants from other people's nests from entering theirs.
Conclusion:
During the work I came to the conclusion:
1. Anthills form an integral part of the forest community.
2. Anthills are a family, a community, a community (this is certainly a similarity to the structure of human life).
3. Ants living in anthills are eternal builders, brave warriors. These are insects that actively rebuild the world around them.
4. The significance of ants and anthills in nature is great and varied.
5. Ant predation – has a positive effect on the forest, since ants, by eating various insects, protect the forest from possible pests.
By protecting anthills, we protect our forests!
It is made from twigs, from pine needles
Will build a real house
No saw and no nails.
Who is the builder?.. Ant.
N. Ivanova
Ants are social insects. They live in families in large anthills. The abdomen of ants is connected to the chest using a thin stalk. They have well-developed upper jaws, which they use both for crushing food and for protection from enemies. Females and worker ants have stingers and poison glands that secrete formic acid.
Ant families consist of castes, each of which performs its own functions. The bulk of the family consists of working individuals. They do everything necessary work in the nest: they build and clean it, get food, take care of the offspring, protect the nest from enemies. Some species have a caste of soldiers - large-headed ants, armed with large jaws and acting as guards. The entire family is produced by a single breeding female founder.
One anthill can contain from several hundred to tens of thousands of individuals. In the warm season, usually once a year, a mass appearance of winged males and females occurs in the family. The males soon die, and the females shed their wings and begin to found a new nest, in which they lay the first batch of eggs. The female feeds the hatched larvae with nutritious secretions of the salivary glands. The larvae turn into pupae, then worker individuals emerge from them, which begin to expand the nest, take over protecting the family and feeding new larvae.
Ants eat everything, but they especially love sweets. They even specifically breed aphids and protect them from predators. For them, aphids are like milk cows that supply the ants with sweet, sugary juice.
Today, about 10 thousand species of ants are known. They are distributed on all continents except Antarctica, and are especially numerous in the tropics. More than 200 species live in Russia, about half of them in forests.
MYSTERY
He is a real worker
Very, very hard working.
Under a pine tree in a dense forest
He builds a house from needles.
(Ant) PROVERBS AND SAYINGS
The ant is not big, but it digs mountains.
FOLK SIGNS
If the ants are hiding in a pile - wait strong wind, rain, thunderstorms.
Ants are finishing the anthill - wait for a cold winter.In the forest thicket, small, hardworking insects - red forest ants - built an anthill. This is their "home". The ant heap is built from twigs and dry grass; this is the upper part of the house, and below it in the soil there are underground floors of the anthill with many passages. The anthill usually has a dome-shaped shape, which protects it from rain; water rolls off the top and does not wash out the home. The height of the anthill sometimes reaches up to 1 meter. The nest is maintained at constant humidity. The nesting material circulates all the time: the ants lift up pine needles and twigs. Therefore, there is never mold in the nest.
Thousands of ants live in a large nest. Insects have a distribution of labor: some are responsible for building housing and preparing food, others produce offspring, etc. It is interesting to watch how ants scurry around the anthill all day long. Some are building material, others are prey for food (caterpillars, slugs)
How do ants reproduce?
On warm autumn days, especially after rain, flocks of ants - males and queens - fly in the air. Males live only a few days. After flight, females lose their wings and warm time lay eggs for years. The laying female lives for several years. Working females not only feed the larvae, but also clean them, moving them from the top of the anthill to the bottom (depending on the weather) and back. Worker ants feed each other.
How do wood ants overwinter?
For the winter, forest red ants climb into the very depths of the anthill, where the temperature does not drop as much as on the surface. There, gathered in a tight lump, they become numb until spring. In the spring, when the snow melts and the earth warms up, the anthill comes to life again. After wintering, ants become more active in destroying insect pests.
Identify the connection between ants and the forest
It is estimated that a family from one anthill destroys from 10-80 thousand insects per day, of which 80 percent are pests. It is believed that ants from four medium-sized anthills are able to protect a hectare of forest from pests. To protect forests where there are no ants, they are moved there artificially. Some people sometimes stir up anthills with sticks, disturbing the normal life of the ants, who die from this. Thus, the forest is deprived of reliable defenders. It is impossible to disturb the peace of ants.
Ants are very beneficial insects: By protecting anthills, we preserve our forests.
Ants are insects from the order Hymenoptera. We all know that they live in colonies, they have a queen, they are very hardworking and strong. But there are also things that not everyone knows about. So let's see 15 interesting facts about ants.
1. Ants are, of course, predators. But despite this, they keep their livestock. The role of such livestock is played by aphids. Ants graze aphids, take care of them, protecting them from other insects, and even milk them. Thus, the aphids secrete a special liquid, which the ants happily use as food. And of course, aphids serve as food for them. In general, ants are the only living creatures, other than humans, that raise livestock.
2. Ants have clear responsibilities: builders, soldiers, foragers (those who search for food). If the forager returns several times with nothing, he is executed and allowed to eat himself.
3. There are some species that are exactly like ants in a pod, except that ants have 6 legs, and spiders have 8. Such spiders, as a rule, take advantage of this similarity to protect themselves from birds and other insects, since ants are not an object of gastronomic passion for no one (except, probably, anteaters). But some such spiders, on the contrary, take advantage of this similarity to hunt the ants themselves. They close their two paws, go into the anthill, pick out and kill the ant, after which they take it out of the anthill, like a dead comrade, and eat it themselves.
4. Ants can not only punish, but also care. If an ant is injured, they will take care of it until it recovers, and if the ant becomes crippled, then other ants will also take care of it and bring it food as long as it is able to ask for it.
5. Most ants are the working class and all worker ants are females whose reproductive system is underdeveloped.
6. Ants are not allowed to eat the food they find. First, they must bring all the food they find to the anthill, after which distribution takes place.
7. One of the common delicacy dishes is "". These are ant larvae. This dish costs about $90 per kilogram.
8. The ant queen (queen) lives on average 15 years and mates only once in her entire life, but constantly produces her offspring.
9. If an ant is idle and does nothing for no apparent reason, then it is kicked out of the anthill. But what is also interesting is the fact that this even applies to the queen. Ants can kick out the queen if she produces few offspring and then choose a new one.
10. American entomologist Derek Morley monitored the behavior of ants and found out that when they wake up, they stretch out all 6 of their legs, after which they open their jaws wide, which means the ants also stretch and yawn when they wake up.
11. Many people think that ants and termites are practically the same species, but this is not true. Ants are closer to bees and wasps, and termites are closer to!
12. Some tribes in South America The rite of passage for a boy to become a man goes like this: the boy puts on a sleeve full of ants. After numerous bites, the boy's hands become swollen, paralyzed and even blackened, but this goes away over time.
13. Formic acid has proven itself very well as a pain reliever for diseases such as arthritis, arthrosis, rheumatism, gout, etc.
14. Many species of ant can stay under water for several days and nothing will happen to them.
15. Ants can always find their way to their anthill. This is explained by the fact that ants leave a trail of pheromones behind them, along which they find their way home.
Ants are one of the most numerous and famous insects. They are distinguished by extremely complex social organization, biology and behavior. There are 12,000 species of ants in the world. Along with their closest relatives, wasps, these insects are included in the order Hymenoptera, but at the same time they are so unique that they are classified as a separate superfamily.
The ant's body is divided into three sections: a large head, a relatively small chest and a voluminous abdomen.
The paws are relatively thin, but they are armed with tenacious claws. Distinctive feature These insects have a thin interception between the chest and abdomen and various glands that secrete odorous substances (each species has its own), which to a certain extent replace the tongue of these insects. With the help of odorous marks, ants signal danger, distinguish their own from strangers, notify about the beginning of the breeding season, the availability of food, and even... the need to take out the trash. The scent of carpenter ants is so strong that a person can easily smell it, and these insects smell like geraniums. In addition, the glands can secrete formic acid or poison (some species have a small sting for this purpose). However, the main organ of defense of ants is the mandibles. They are quite large, sharp and capable of snapping at a phenomenal speed - 120-230 km/h! Therefore, the bite of even a tiny ant is very sensitive and can scare off a relatively large predator.
The ant's brain in relation to body weight is one of the largest animals in the world, but the idea of the extraordinary intelligence of these creatures is greatly exaggerated. In fact, ants do not have high intelligence, since all their reactions are exclusively innate in nature. But the complexity and diversity of these instincts have no analogues in nature and, indeed, amaze the imagination.
As with all social insects, individuals of the same species in ants are divided into three castes: egg-laying females (queens or queens), males and sterile females (workers). Belonging to a caste is determined genetically and cannot be changed under any circumstances. Queens are the largest in size; at the beginning of life they are winged, but after the mating summer they chew off their wings. Males are the smallest in the colony and are also winged. Working ants are always wingless; they are larger than males, but significantly smaller than the queen. Only in the most primitive species do all worker ants look the same, but most often within this caste there are their own morphological varieties. This division is due to the “professional” specialization of worker ants. In general, the color of these insects is inconspicuous: black, red, brown. The tiniest dacetin ants do not exceed 1 mm in length, and the most large species, giant dinoponera and giant camponotus, reach 3 cm!
Giant Camponotus (Camponotus gigas).
Ants inhabit all continents, climate zones and natural areas. They are not found only in the polar regions and in the center of vast deserts. Ants are active in the tropics all year round, in the temperate zone they spend the winter in a torpored state. Almost everywhere the density of ant colonies is very high. Even in the temperate zone, several dozen species of these insects live on several square kilometers, totaling 10-20% of the biomass. In the tropics, the share of ants in the total biomass of living beings can reach up to 30%; up to 2 billion ants can live there per 1 km² of territory! This success is explained complex organization ant communities.
Tiny colonies of primitive ant species are able to fit their nest into a nut shell or an empty stomach.
All species of these insects are colonial. In the most primitive species, the colony size can amount to several dozen worker ants, and the largest families can include up to 22 million individuals. Most species are sedentary; they create special nests for housing - anthills. Usually the main part of the anthill is immersed in the soil, where it forms a branched system of passages, sometimes reaching a depth of 4 m. The queen, eggs and larvae are located here. The appearance of the outer part of the anthill can vary from simple hole in the ground to a huge heap of twigs and pine needles.
Red anthills forest ants(Formica rufa) - the largest in the world, their height can reach 2 m!
The nests of cave ants from Australia look unusual. They are located in the ground, and the ants surround the entrance to the nest with a fairly high barrier of dry leaves and twigs.
A nest of cave ants (Polyrhachis macropa) is surrounded by leaves of a veinless acacia tree (Acacia aneura).
The so-called spiral ants build real labyrinths of dried clay around the entrance.
Nest of spiral ants.
But the most amazing ant nests are above the surface. Red-breasted carpenter ants behave like real bark beetles. They gnaw holes in rotten wood and make their nests in the trunks of old trees.
Cellular nest of odorous carpenter ants (Lasius fuliginosus).
The related odorous carpenter ants do not gnaw out tunnels, but build cardboard nests in hollows.
A nest of sharp-bellied ants can be confused with a tinder fungus.
Finally, sharp-bellied ants build real paper nests in the crowns, similar to wasp nests. The dwellings of tailor ants or weaver ants can be considered the pinnacle of construction art. They create nests from tree leaves, and do this without tearing them off the branches. During the construction process, worker ants grab the edge of one leaf with their paws, and hold the edge of another with their mandibles; at this time, their fellow ants bring their own larvae to the edges of the leaves, secreting adhesive threads.
Green weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) build a nest.
The arrangement of groups of insects depends on the configuration of the leaves and does not change until the process of stitching the nest is completed.
And this is what the result of the work of weaver ants looks like. The basis of the nest was made up of live (green) leaves from several branches. Where there was not enough material, the ants skillfully patched up the gaps with fallen (brown) leaves.
Some types of ants do not have permanent nests and roam all the time. But the movement of the column cannot last forever; insects are forced to periodically stop to reproduce. In this case, they create a temporary nest from their own bodies. Many ants weave into openwork networks, from which a huge ball is formed. In its very center there is a queen laying eggs.
A giant living nest consisting of nomadic ants, or Burchell's ants (Eciton burchellii).
The relationships of ants in a family are extremely complex and varied. Only in the most primitive species can the queen leave the nest and participate in collecting food. In most cases, the queen is engaged only in laying eggs, and all other types of work are performed by worker ants. But this does not mean that their caste is in an oppressed position. After all, it is the worker ants that often determine the fate of the queen: if she lays few eggs, she can be replaced with a more fertile queen, and the unwanted one is killed. In turn, the queen’s well-being depends on how abundantly she is fed, and therefore on the number of working individuals. If the worker ants die, the unattended queen, eggs and larvae also die. Therefore, the young queen is primarily concerned with increasing the number of her “subjects.”
A slave ant carries a larva. The jaws of these insects are adapted for capturing and holding prey.
The professional responsibilities of worker ants are determined by the needs of the species. In all species of ants, young worker individuals begin their “career” in the anthill by working as “nannies” and “nursers”: they transfer eggs and pupae from one chamber of the anthill to another, protect them from theft, and help the new generation hatch. Their responsibilities also include work on expanding the passages, cleaning the nest, and removing the corpses of dead relatives. Over time, they begin to move further and further from the nest and move on to collecting food. Interestingly, “career growth” directly depends on the success of the first campaigns. Individuals that bring little food remain “nannies” for the rest of their lives, and those who are especially lucky in finding food become foragers very quickly.
The forager profession is the most common in the ant family, but not the only one. Since worker ants are attacked by predators, and sometimes by their own brothers, many species have worker soldiers to protect them. They are larger than ordinary individuals and are armed with powerful mandibles. The behavior of the soldiers is different: among wandering ants they move at the head and along the edges of the column; among harvester ants, they line up as a guard of honor on the side of the path along which food collectors follow; in leaf-cutter ants, soldiers ride on pieces of leaves carried by foragers and protect them from attack from above; In the European cork-headed ant, the soldiers have a bluntly cut head, with which they plug the passages in the anthill and allow only individuals that have “their” smell into it.
Burchell's Eciton Worker-Soldier is armed with enormous mandibles.
Among ant professions there are also quite exotic ones. For example, Australian honey ants store food... in the bodies of their own relatives! To do this, they have special working individuals who never leave the nest. They spend their entire lives clinging to the ceiling of the chamber with their paws; their main responsibility is to absorb food brought by foragers. From constant feeding, these ants swell incredibly and become huge; if such an individual accidentally falls from the ceiling, its abdomen bursts and it dies. When there is a need for food, other family members come to these “living barrels” and beg for food from them. However, the ability to feed family members is characteristic of all types of ants; it is called trophallaxis. Thanks to it, a well-fed ant is able to quickly transfer part of the accumulated energy to hungry and weakening individuals, and the survival of the family as a whole increases.
"Live barrels" of Australian honey ants hang from the ceiling of an anthill.
Smell is the main marker that determines the behavior of an individual and the attitude of its fellows towards it. An ant from someone else's nest (even if it belongs to the same species) will not be allowed into the anthill. By smell, ants determine where and what kind of food was found: they follow the odorous marks left by the lucky one to the food source. That is why you can often see these insects moving in a chain one after another. Concerted efforts allow the ants to carry prey and building materials, many times their size. The wounded ant also begins to secrete special substances that literally call on its fellows to come to its aid. Dead ants secrete oleic acid, which encourages the workers to remove the corpse from the nest. In addition to smell, contacts with antennae can be used, and in some species, chirping and tapping with the abdomen. Thus, primitive instincts in different combinations form very complex types of behavior.
Thanks to their tenacious legs, ants move horizontally and horizontally with equal ease. vertical surfaces. Runner ants (phaeton ants) that live in the deserts of Africa run especially fast. Swift running helps them prepare food at noon without getting burned on the hot ground. Wood ants can glide, changing the direction of flight; some species are capable of jumping. Thanks to mutual assistance, ants are not afraid of even obstacles that are insurmountable for single individuals.
The ants formed a living bridge across the crevice between the stones. Neither of them could have covered that distance on their own.
During floods, fire ants form rafts from their own bodies; these floating clusters are capable of crossing rivers.
On the surface of the living raft, white eggs and larvae are visible, which fire ants especially carefully protect from getting wet.
Among ants there are herbivorous, predatory and omnivorous species.
The European or steppe harvester ant (Messor structor) prepares food.
Herbivorous harvester ants, during the flowering of cereals in deserts and steppes, are harvesting seeds at an accelerated pace, the reserves of which last them for the whole year. Carpenter ants eat dead wood and gum from trees.
Leaf-cutter ants, with the same diligence, bite off pieces of leaves and take them to the anthill. True, they do not eat the leaves themselves, but only chew and store this wet mass in underground chambers. There, in the dampness and darkness, mushrooms begin to grow on this “silage”, which the ants eat.
A worker leaf-cutter ant carries a piece of cut leaf on which a soldier sits.
Omnivorous species collect the corpses of invertebrates, sweet secretions of aphids and other herbivorous insects.
The ant milks the humpback, which gets rid of the annoying “shepherd” with a drop of sweet liquid.
Ants love these sugary secretions so much that they carefully protect aphids and take care of them in every possible way: they transfer them to healthy plants, hide them in an anthill at night, graze them and protect them from attacks by predators, for example, ladybugs.
Camponotus ants and the cluster of aphids they care for.
Predatory and partly omnivorous species attack living insects and their larvae. Nomadic ants living in South America are especially merciless. These are large and very aggressive insects, fearlessly attacking all living things in their path. Their bites and large numbers can put people, and even such formidable animals as jaguars, to flight. If escape is impossible (for example, the animal is tied), then the ants, by biting, bring it to painful shock and death, and then, with their joint efforts, eat the victim. Not a single animal in the jungle tries to resist them, but immediately runs away when it sees a moving column.
Ants surrounded the egg of a Morpho peleides butterfly without waiting for the mother to fly away.
All types of ants reproduce at strictly defined times 1-2 times a year. The simplest method of reproduction is the so-called budding. At the same time, a young queen is born in the mother colony, which moves with some of the workers to a separate anthill. But more often, ants perform mating flights, during which young males and females rise into the sky. Here individuals from different anthills mix with each other and form pairs. Young queens with one or more males land on the ground and begin to build a nest. Soon after fertilization, the males die, and the females lay eggs, from which workers will subsequently hatch. Until the workers begin to forage, the queen does not eat anything. This period can sometimes last up to a year, and the female’s wings help her survive hunger. After the mating flight, she chews them off, and the remaining muscles dissolve in her body, released nutrients go to form eggs and maintain the life of the uterus.
Ant eggs form a sticky mass, making them easier for workers to carry. Under the abdomen of an adult individual, legless larvae are visible; they differ from eggs in having a dark head, weak segmentation, and crumbled villi.
In all species of ants, females (workers or young queens) are born from fertilized eggs, and males from unfertilized eggs. Thus, the composition of the family self-regulates: the fewer males, the higher the probability of their birth. A surprising exception is the small fire ant, for which everything happens exactly the opposite. From unfertilized eggs, only female queens are born, and from fertilized eggs - workers. In some eggs, paternal genes lead to the destruction of maternal chromosomes, and then males are born from them. Thus, females of this species always inherit only maternal genes, and males only inherit paternal ones, that is, both sexes essentially reproduce independently of each other by cloning.
Despite their tiny size, ants live for a very long time: workers live for 1-3 years, and queens live up to 20 years! And only the age of males usually does not exceed several weeks.
A worker ant looks at the queen, exhausted from her mating flight.
Ants have many natural enemies. Adults are eaten by various birds, toads, frogs, lizards, shrews, predatory wasps, and spiders. In search of eggs and pupae, anthills are ravaged by wild boars and bears. Anteaters, aardvarks, moloch lizards, and antlions feed exclusively on these insects. When attacking an anthill, instinct prompts the ants not to hide, but to jointly attack the enemy. Thus, the colony survives due to the death of individual individuals. In cylindrical camponotuses, the instinct of self-sacrifice is so developed that in the event of an attack, they literally commit hara-kiri to themselves. A sticky liquid pours out from the ripped open abdomen, gluing the enemy together.
Ants provide an invaluable service to various forest flowers. It is difficult for these plants to spread their seeds because they are small and there is no wind in the forest. Therefore, the seeds of blueberry, violet, marianum, hoofweed, celandine, and kandyk have a tiny juicy appendage that attracts ants. Having picked the seed, the ant drags it into the nest and feasts on the juicy appendage, and throws away the seed itself. Thus, these insects annually carry away billions of seeds throughout the forest. In the tropics, some plants attract ants to protect their leaves from being eaten by other insects. To do this, they provide their guards with free housing. For example, African acacias have hollow thorns, and myrmecodia have thick tubers with many passages and cavities. Their guards settle in these ready-made anthills.
Tuberous myrmecodia (Myrmecodia tuberosa) on a tree branch. A cross-section of the tuber shows cavities and passages for ants.
People use ants in a variety of ways. In Mexico and Thailand, the large, nutritious eggs of some species are collected and used in cooking as a caviar substitute. Large ants are fried, and the tenacious weaver ants are used for suturing in the field. To do this, the ant is brought to the edges of the wound and allowed to grab onto the skin, after which the body is torn off and the head is left. The ant's mandibles act like a stapler, firmly stitching the edges together for several days until the wound is completely scarred. IN middle lane ants are sometimes attracted to protect forests and gardens, but it must be borne in mind that the habit of these insects to breed aphids can also be harmful. In the tropics, leaf-cutter ants cause great damage to fruit plantations. Aggressive fire ants are extremely dangerous. When they bite, they release poison into the victim's body. Although it is not fatal, it causes severe pain, similar to a burn, and in some cases, a dangerous allergic reaction.
The benefits of ants far outweigh the harm they can cause, which is why these insects have long been loved by people. They are an example of hard work and mutual assistance. At the same time, a number of endemic species are threatened with extinction. Currently, 146 species of ants are included in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.