Photos of different types of ants and interesting features of their life

There are more than 12,000 species of ants on Earth. They inhabit a variety of natural landscapes, adapt to almost any conditions of existence and manage to become the dominant group of insects almost everywhere. Of course, ants of each individual species have many features, and this is not so much about appearance, but about the specifics of behavior and lifestyle in general. And here even our closest neighbors (from the nearest forest) can be more interesting than the inhabitants of the exotic tropics described in the books.

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Among the ants there are both champions in heat resistance and walrus insects. For example, representatives of the family of runners live in deserts and normally withstand air temperatures up to 50 ° C, feeding on insects that quickly die in such heat. And the Kamchatka ant, on the contrary, survives wintering, cooling down to -52 ° C, but remaining alive at the same time.

The photo below shows a bullet ant that can withstand temperatures that are lethal to other insects:

 

pharaoh ant

The pharaoh ant is one of the most famous to man.Especially - a resident of an apartment or a private house. These ants are the very tiny pests that run in orderly lines along the baseboards, occupy the trash cans and drag crumbs from the table and sugar from the nightstands.

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

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The mixture of acids secreted by pharaoh ants is deadly to bed bugs. Therefore, in an apartment heavily infested with pharaoh ants, bugs almost always die out.

Here are some more photos of pharaoh ants:

The pharaoh ant is known for its difficulty in breeding - not only the extermination of individual foragers in the room, but even the destruction of their individual anthill does not at all mean the removal of ants from the house. The reason for this is the ability of this species to create peculiar dispersed nests, in each of which she lives or several breeding females and several hundred worker ants.

These nests are interconnected and form a huge colony that can take up several floors in an apartment building. And until the last such nest is destroyed, the ants themselves will safely "please" the owner of the premises with their presence.

 

red forest ant

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

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

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

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

The red wood ant is an endangered species whose numbers are constantly declining. Part of the blame for this lies with the person destroying young anthills and catching the ants themselves for the preparation of traditional medicine.

 

Reaper Ants - steppe workers

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

Pictures of Reaper Ants:

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

A feature of harvester ants is that they feed their larvae with ground 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 a smaller caste gnaw the resulting pieces, and those individuals that feed the larvae grind the remaining flour into a kind of gruel.

In the picture - a reaper ant carries seeds to an anthill:

 

Bulldog Ants: Giants of the Ant World

But bulldog ants are already representatives of the tropical fauna. They are distributed almost exclusively in Australia and are considered one of the most primitive ants, having much in common with wasps. In the photo - an adult bulldog ant:

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Bulldog ants are one of the largest ants in the world. The length of the worker ant can reach 3 cm. At the same time, the difference in size between the worker ant and the uterus is not as noticeable in them as in other ants.

Bulldog ants got their name for their huge jaws, with the help of which they get food and ... jump. It is with force pushing off the ground with its jaws that the ant can jump up to 30 cm. In the photographs below, you can clearly see these powerful jaws:

In addition, bulldog ants are good swimmers. Their larvae feed on their own food, which is brought to the anthill by worker ants.

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

 

Army ants: the fear of all the tropics

Army 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 the territories in which they find themselves.

Photos of army 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 grappled workers, or finds a hole or cavity under stones in which the queen will lay eggs for several weeks. After growing a certain number of young ants and the depletion of food supplies, the colony is removed from its place and moved to another, more fodder site.

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The uterus of the nomad ant is striking in its fecundity: in Asian species, it lays up to 130,000 eggs per day - about three eggs every two seconds. No other insect has such fertility.

 

Carpenter Ants

Among the carpenter ants, there are many species familiar to us - these are the same ants that run along tree trunks and collect honeydew from the leaves. They are called tree borers because they often arrange their nests in stumps or under the bark of living trees, carefully gnawing passages and chambers in the wood. Because of their activities, they can cause damage to forestry.

Photo of carpenter ants:

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

 

Amazon ants and their slaves

Amazon ants are a very specific group of ant species that generally do not breed workers. Their offspring are either future queens or soldiers. To search for food and care for their larvae, either the Amazon mother herself, or a detachment of her soldiers, attacks anthills of more peaceful ant species and steals larvae and pupae from there.The worker ants that emerged from them perceive the invaders as parents, and in the Amazon anthill they perform all the routine work.

Photo of Amazon ants:

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

In the photo - an Amazon ant carries a stolen larva to its anthill:

Among the Amazons there are species that live in Russia.

 

Leaf cutter ants are human competitors

Leaf cutter ants are one of the few creatures in the world that are engaged in agriculture, and at a very high technological level. Worker ants of these species gnaw pieces of leaves, carry them to the anthill, where these leaves are chewed by other ants, mixed with saliva and infect with spores of a special fungus.

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

Photos of leaf cutter ants:

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In a colony of leaf-cutting ants, there are 7 castes of individuals that differ in appearance and behavior. The difference in size between the smallest worker ant and a soldier can be up to 200 times. At the same time, in general, all ants of the family perform up to 29 different unique operations in the preparation of food.

In the picture below - a string of leaf-cutting ants:

In habitats, large colonies can destroy deciduous cover on large trees, so they are actively fought near plantations and gardens.

 

Parasitic ants

There are a lot of these species, and they parasitize in different ways, but, as a rule, at the expense of other ants. For example, in the nests of reaper ants, small ants can parasitize, never coming to the surface and feeding on the reserves of the reapers themselves.

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

Termites are very similar to ants both externally and in the nature of their social structure. However, these insects should not be confused: termites are systematically closer to cockroaches, and ants to wasps and bees. Nevertheless, in terms of the ability to build impressive structures and various features of biology, these insects have a lot in common.

 

Interesting video: the battle between ants and wasps for prey

 

Spider vs Ant