ANTZ

 Genus Polyergus - Formicinae

  The Ant   

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Last-Modified: 11/07/08 10:28    - 

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TERMS

ANTS - 

Typically, an ant has a large head and a slender, oval abdomen joined to the thorax, or midsection, by a small waist. The antennae are elbowed. The mouth has two sets of jaws: the outer pair is used for carrying objects such as food and for digging, and the inner pair is used for chewing. Some species have a powerful sting at the tip of the abdomen.

There are generally three castes, or classes: queens, males, and workers. Some species live in the nests of other species as parasites; i.e., the 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.

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. Carpenter ants -Camponotus - large, black ants common in North America, live in old logs and timbers. Some species live in trees or in the hollow stems of weeds. Tailor, or weaver, ants, found in the tropics of Africa. For example,  Tetramorium, these make nests of leaves and similar materials held together with silk secreted by the larvae. Dolichoderus, a South American genus, glues together bits of animal feces for its nest. The widely distributed pharaoh ant (Monomariumpharaonis), a small yellowish insect living in houses, builds its nest outdoors only in warm climates. 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. Habits of the African driver ant (Dorylus) are similar. The fire ant (Sole nopsis saevissima), introduced into Alabama from South America, had spread throughout the southern United States by the mid-1970s. It inflicts a painful sting and is considered a pest because it builds large mounds as nests. Effective, ecologically acceptable methods to control it are being sought.

The life cycle of the ant has four stages—egg, larva, pupa, and adult—and spans a period of 8 to 10 weeks. The queen spends her life laying eggs. The workers are females and do the work of the nest; the larger ones, the soldiers, defend the colony. At certain times of the year, many species produce winged males and queens. They fly into the air, where they mate. The male dies soon afterward, and the fertilized queen establishes a new nest.

The food of ants consists of both plant and animal substances. Certain species, including those of the genus Formica, often eat the eggs and larvae of other ants or those of their own species; other species eat the liquid secretions of plants. The honey ants - Camponotinae, Dolichoderinae, eat the so-called honeydew, a by-product of digestion secreted by certain aphids. The ant usually obtains the liquid by gently stroking the aphid's abdomen with its antennae. Some genera (Leptothorax) eat the honeydew that has fallen onto the surface of a leaf. The so-called Argentine ant (Iridomyrmex humilis) and the fire ant also eat honeydew. 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 Tes leaf-cutting ant (Atta texana) is a pest that often strips the leaves from plants to provide nourishment for its fungus beds.

The social behavior of the ants, along with that of the honeybees, is the most complex in the insect world. Slave-making ants, which include many species, have a variety of methods for “enslaving” the ants of other species. The queen 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.

   Genus Polyergus - Formicinae

  The Ant   

Hymenoptera Formicinae  -   The Ant  -   An insect related to, or part of a special group of wasps. There are over 15,000 ant-species. The average life expectancy of an ant is 45-60 days. The abdomen, in the metasoma of the ant, contains two stomachs. One stomach holds food that it uses itself and the second is used to store food that it will share with the rest of the colony. Ants occur in almost all land habitats, are 0.05–25 cm long, and live together in colonies. A colony consists of wingless sterile female workers and a smaller number of fertile males and females that are usually produced by a single queen. The young males and females fly from the nest to mate, after which the males die and the young queens found new colonies. Ant societies range from simple groups of a few individuals to large complex nests comprising millions of ants and sometimes containing other insects taken as slaves to work in the colony - Polyergus Rufescens - The Slaver Ant 

Some ants have stings; others secrete burning acids, formic acid,  as a defense. 

The ant is not a parasite.

Parasite   -   An organism living in or on another organism of a different species, called the host, from which it obtains food and protection. Many parasites have complex life cycles, with one or more intermediate hosts, of different species, supporting them during their development. The study of parasites - parasitology - is of importance in medicine since many parasites, such as bacteria, fungi, either cause or transmit disease. Many plants are either partly or completely parasitic.

Formic acid - methanoic acid symbolized by HCOOH -   A colorless corrosive liquid, containing fatty acids and having a pungent smell. It is used in textile finishing and chemical manufacture. Its name comes from the Latin formica, which means ant, and whose sting / bite secretes formic acid.

 The Ant  

The ant is an insect, and has six legs like all insects. There are three types of ants in each nest, the queen, the sterile female, or the workers, and the males. The females do all the work and the male ants only serve one purpose, to mate with future queens. The queen grows to adulthood, mates, and then spends the rest of her life laying eggs. A colony may have only one queen, or there may be many queens depending on the species and size of the colony. Ants have been successfully surviving on the Earth for more than 100 million years and are found almost everywhere on the planet. 

The Ant - What is it?

From perhaps only one or two kinds, it is estimated that they have now evolved, making up between 10 - 20,000 different species of ants. Other than bacteria, this is the most diversified genus and perhaps the most successful of all macro-species, along with the Termite.

Species   -  A unit of classification of animals and plants. Individuals of the same species / genus can breed among themselves, producing fertile offspring that resemble the parents. Some species are divided into subspecies and varieties. Breeds of domestic animals and cultivated varieties of plants have been developed by man and are derived from wild species. All breeds of domestic dog, for instance, belong to the same species—Canis familiaris—and can breed together.

   Western Harvester Ant   

Ants build many different types of nests / habitat. Many ants build uncomplicated little mounds out of dirt or sand. Others use small sticks, combined with dry soils to make stronger mounds, that can offer shelter from rain or wind. The Western Harvester ant makes an inconspicuous mound on the surface, but then tunnels up to five meters straight down to live and hibernate during winter. 

Ant entrances / tunnels consist of many off-shoots leading to chambers connected by more tunnels. The ant uses these various chambers for things like, nurseries, food storage, gardens, resting spaces for the worker ants, and escape routes. As the ants work their way through this labyrinth, they give off a communal / collective scent that is particular to any one nest. This tells or communicates to  the home-ants that they are in their own nest, and to strangers that they are not.  As they forage outside, if they find food they will mark the way back with a scent trail. This ant-scent is a chemical called a pheromone.

Some ants live in and eat rotten wood, like termites. The Army ant  -  Ecitron Burchelli  - does not have a static home, as it is always on the run, traveling in very large groups of up to 750,000 individuals, bull-dozing their way through anything in front of them, searching for food. At night they make temporary bivouacs sometimes out of other living ants, that all hold hands together.

Ants can range in size from the quite small to an unnerving 2 cms.

Their body has three main parts. The head, the trunk, the bit in the middle, and the rear or metasoma. All six legs are attached to the trunk, and each has three joints making it very workable. The legs of the ant are very very strong and allows it to run very fast. If we could run as fast for our size, we would be as fast as a Ostrich. 

An ant weighs on average only one gram, but she can lift 20 times his own weight, it is like a man lifting a grand-piano with his mouth.

Like all insects, and unlike us, the ant has no skeleton. It is the outside of their body that holds them together, and also acts like protective armor; this is called the exoskeleton. 

  The Egg, the Larva, the Pupa  

Again like all insects, the ant has four distinct growing stages, the egg, larva, pupa and the adult. 

The biggest ant is the queen and can be many times bigger than her subjects. Her main role in life is to lay eggs which the worker ants diligently look after. The worker ants are sterile, they forage for food, look after the young, and defend the nest from unwanted visitors and raiders. The worker ants have evolved to be so organized that they keep the eggs and larvae in different groups, in different chambers, according to their age. 

Biological Evolution  -  is  the believed process by which the first and most primitive of living organisms, like the one-celled creature the amoeba, developed into the plants and animal life known today. Until the 18th century it was generally believed that each species of life was separately created by God. The most fitting theory was put forward by Charles Darwin and A. R. Wallace in 1858: they proposed that new species arose by a process of natural selection. Later work and advance technology has supported Darwin’s theory, which is now generally accepted.

Evolution - Survival of the fittest - If we believe in evolution, the propensity to survive, we must recognize that most creatures are the progeny of their ancestors. When talking about insects, fossils tell us that they were living over 100 million years ago. We must recognize that climate and global environment has changed over the millennia, and such variations would have changed the living conditions of many organisms. Some so bad that many either died out, or changed themselves, to accommodate the new conditions. This being that those among them with a greater propensity to survive any change, lived on. 

Using this pattern of events, when we talk of an intelligence in something like the ant, we must realize it is not like any intelligence we might have. The ant does what it does due to a billion repetitions of certain characteristics, which has allowed it to survive. 

   Leaf-Cutter Ants   

The Leaf-Cutter Ants are like farmers in that they purposely grow food for themselves. They cut off pieces of leaves and take them back to their nests.  They chew the leaves to make a pulp and as the leaves break down, a special fungus grows that they, and their young, feed. 

This 100 million year old affiliation between fungus-growing ants and the fungus itself, has long been considered the ultimate model of symbiosis. Moreover, the discovery that the fungus has cultured an antibiotic producing bacterium, may provide new insight into the identification, production and use of new antibiotics.

The head consists of the jaws, eyes, and antennae. 

The jaws open and close in a sideways motion like a pair of scissors, and are very powerful, and there are as many variations of ant-jaw as there are different kinds of ants. 

The Flea life cycle - INSECTS

Understanding how fleas live, and breed, makes it easier to understand the best methods available to eradicate a flea problem.

EGGS.   One female adult flea can lay anything from one to FORTY eggs each day, with the highest concentration of egg-laying occurring in the final two to three days of life. Eggs are oval, around 0.5mm long, white and rounded at both ends. The eggs are not sticky so once laid, they immediately fall onto the ground, wherever the host is at that time.

Depending upon the temperature and most importantly, humidity, the eggs will hatch into larvae within two to ten days. Humidity below 50% may cause them to dry out and become food for luckier hatchlings. The environment in which the eggs are deposited is therefore of prime consideration to flea survival rate and helps to explain why warmer winters and hot summers have increased flea populations considerably in recent years. Homes should be well aired and this will help the drying effect and possibly protect against not only fleas but also the dust-mite.

LARVAE. A larva will hatch from an egg using a chitin tooth - an egg splitting spine on its head. This disappears when the larva changes into the second of its three 'molts' or development stages. It is this tooth that is changed by modern oral flea treatments. Treatments contain an insect development inhibitor renders the chitin tooth ineffective, this prevents the larvae from cutting his way out.

Larvae are semi-transparent and sparsely covered in short hairs. They are usually white with a yellow-brownish head and are generally quite active. They are dependent on a diet of adult flea faeces for survival, but will also feed on other organic debris in your carpet. In this domestic environment, flea larvae are found at the base of the carpet pile, where they can encounter food, are sheltered by the canopy of carpet fiber and can keep away from direct light. So it is clear that the more powerful any vacuum cleaner you have the greater ability for it to suck these little varmints out and into the dust container for disposal.

PUPAE.   After the third moult, the larva moves to an undisturbed place to begin spinning a silk cocoon coated with particles of debris picked up from its surroundings for use as camouflage.   It is within the cocoon that the larvae turns into the next stage of development - the pupa. Pupae subjected to suitable hatching conditions can emerge as adult fleas as early as three to five days following pupation. From this stage, the adult flea develops. The fully formed adult flea remains in the cocoon until stimulated to hatch by, for example, warmth, vibration and even exhaled carbon dioxide from a passing potential host - which includes the human! 

Under certain laboratory conditions fleas have lived dormant like this for up to five years. So even an empty house can harbor these dangers until the unsuspecting new tenant moves in creating the phenomenon known as the 'pupal window' and you need to be aware of it before effective flea treatment can begin.

Environmental sprays and powders cannot readily penetrate the cocoon and therefore have no effect on the maturing adult inside if used on their own. These fleas continue to hatch from their protective cocoons and, unless the flea control regime is maintained, will be the source of the next generation of fleas ready to cause you and your dog more problems!

ADULTS  Almost immediately after the adult flea has hatched from its cocoon, it will begin looking for its first blood meal. Unlike the flea larva, which tends to move away from light, adult fleas move upwards and towards the light, in order to be in a better position to locate a suitable victim.

The flea's eyesight is not brilliant and so warmth and carbon dioxide in the air appear to be answerable for helping it find its goal. Air currents will be changed by a cat or dog moving past the adult flea, the carbon dioxide increases and the flea detects these changes and jumps in the hope of landing in close proximity to the waiting adult. Adult fleas have been known to jump as many as 10,000 times in succession, whilst trying to leap onto a passing cat or dog - the flea knows they are close by but it's more a question of luck than judgment when trying to make a successful connection between the hooks on the flea's legs and the fur on the cat or dog.

However, once satisfactorily 'anchored', the flea will immediately begin to feed and the females will begin laying eggs after only 48 hours after the first feed. Before drinking the blood, the flea secretes special enzymes within its saliva into the wound. This substance softens and spreads the skin tissue, assisting with feeding. More helpfully the saliva contains an anti-coagulant making the blood flow. This saliva is usually the cause of allergic reactions in cats, dogs - and humans.

Once on a suitable host, the adult fleas will remain there until they die, which is usually within one or two weeks. Unfortunately for the pet, although providentially for the parasite population, females tend to live longer than males and there are naturally more females than males. If the animal is left to groom itself normally and cats groom more thoroughly than dogs on the whole, many adult fleas will be dislodged or swallowed naturally. However, if for any reason, the animal is unable to groom itself - it may be ill for example, then the owner should groom it more frequently than usual, to complement their pet's natural methods of flea control.

Adult Ants cannot swallow solid food, instead they cut or chew their meal, and suck the juices  and goodness, that is squeezed from it.

The ant has two eyes, each eye is made of many smaller eyes / lenses. They are called compound eyes, enabling them to see movement very well.

The antennae are special appendages used for smell, touch, taste, and vibration-hearing. The end part of the ant, the metasoma, contains the stomach and rectum. Many species of ants have poison sacks and/or stingers in the end of the metasoma, for defense against their many predators. 

When talking about the human body, we know that it functions using different organs that do a number of jobs. But insects, because they are so small have evolved organs, but they are very different to ours.

For example ants do not have any lungs. Oxygen is absorbed through minuscule holes that are all over the body; Carbon Dioxide leaves through the same holes, but ants do not breathe. They have no blood vessels and the  heart is a long tube that circulates a plasma-like liquid from the head to metasoma. As it circulates this ant-blood lubricated the insides of the ants.  The nervous system consists of a one long nerve, like our spinal cord, with off shoots branching off much like us. 

The brain of an ant is made up of around a quarter of a million cells, but whilst the ant is seemingly quite intelligent, the human brain has around 10,000 million brain cells. Though, we could correlate this with a colony of 40,000 ants which collectively, is the same size brain, as a human cell-count.

Those biology student who have watched the ant for any length of time  will see that they do ostensibly communicate with each other, and very effectively too. They interconnect by touching each other with their antennae, and vibrate a feeling of a message, an implication. 

  Sociology of the Ant   

It is all this seemingly well organized structure that makes us think that the ant is a social creature; it is, in as far as it lives  in large colonies or groups consisting of millions, having such a structured civilized life, not unlike our own.

The Social Insect - Like the Ant and the Termite, a social insect is one that lives and works together, just like a human community. All members have their own job to do and they do it ultimately for the good of the colony and for the good of themselves. Sociology   -  The systematic study of the development, organization, functioning, and classification of human societies. It uses such techniques as the systematic comparison of different societies, and surveys of social conditions, attitudes, and behavior. Specialized areas include demography - the study of populations, and political, educational, and urban sociology.

There are three types of ants in each nest, the queen, the sterile female, or the workers, and the males. The females do all the work and the male ants only serve one purpose, to mate with future queens. The queen grows to adulthood, mates, and then spends the rest of her life laying eggs. A colony may have only one queen, or there may be many queens depending on the species and size of the colony. Ants have been successfully surviving on the Earth for more than 100 million years and are found almost everywhere on the planet. 

   Killing Ants   

How to rid yourself, or kill any ants that may be invading your territory. The ant is very territorial and perhaps would understand that we might on occasions, not like it invading our homes. 

It would kill or take into slavery any stranger-ant that might get lost and find itself in the wrong nest. The ant would fight to the death any other marauding colony, and do it without thinking but from an evolutionary habit. 

 

To best get rid of ants,  I have found that the poisonous jelly or syrup is by far the best approach. The sweet tasting food is a Trojan Horse, in as much as the ants gorge on it  and then take it into its lair.

Unwittingly, they feed it to their young and this kills any future generations, breaking the cycle of life.

 

There are billions of ants scampering about, as we speak. But they are only one kind of insect, among billions of other types of insect. It has been calculated that if all insects could be weighed en masse, their total weight would be FOUR TIMES greater than the total weight of all human beings on the planet.

 

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