A message about the life of ants. Interesting facts from the life of ants. Ants as a component of national dishes
The largest family of arthropods are ants. These insects live all over the planet, excluding Antarctica. There are more than 14,000 species of insect families. Considering each type of insect, interesting facts about ants, their characteristics, and life are revealed. Among the varieties of these insects in nature, there are beneficial and dangerous ants.
Appearance of insects
What does an ant look like? The arthropod family consists of three castes: females, males, and workers. The structure of an ant: chest, belly and head. The eyes of arthropods consist of a large number of lenses, but they do not provide clear images and do not distinguish between movements. The upper area of the insect's head is equipped with 3 simple eyes; there are also whiskers on the head for touching the surrounding world.
How many legs does an ant have?
Ants have 6 paws with claws, thanks to which they move around different surfaces. Ants with wings mate in the air every year. The antennae of insects transmit a smell by which the individual determines the place of food, recognizes members of its family, reports alarm and calls for help. The speed of an ant in some species reaches up to 3 km/h.
The weapon of insects against the enemy is poison ( formic acid) and strong jaws with which the insect can injure. An ant bite can be fatal to the victim. The size of insects depends on the status of their community and the varieties of a given order.
How much can an ant lift?
The weight of an ant depends on the type of insect: 1-150 mg. Frequently encountered ants weigh 3-5 mg, but can lift loads up to 50 times their own body weight.
What do ants eat?
Insects are omnivores. Everything that is not encountered on the way, the ants drag home. The diet consists of protein and plant foods.
All individuals are divided into different castes, on which the life expectancy of insects depends.
- Working individuals live 1-3 years. Small insect species live shorter lives than large ones. Insects living in cold climates live shorter than those living in the middle zone, and these, in turn, live shorter than those living in warm regions.
- Life cycle in nature, males are calculated in weeks. The main task of this caste is mating. After completing their duties, they are killed by their ants or die.
- The queen lives the longest of all members of the family; some species of queens live up to 20 years. Interesting information: the queen carpenter ant lives for 28 years.
The life of ants proceeds in complete order and distribution of responsibilities. The hierarchy of ants has a strict order, everyone is busy with their own business and has responsibilities.
Anthill
What kind of anthills are there?
Ants build their homes both on the ground and underground, however, the tropics are harsh, the shores are flooded, and it is difficult for tropical individuals to build an anthill. Climatic conditions forced insects to migrate to trees; for tropical species of insects, the construction of hanging anthills is a common thing, which the tropical ant can easily cope with.
How does an anthill work?
The construction of an anthill begins with a small hole or depression under a stone where the fertilized queen is located. She does not eat and does not come to the surface until the first individuals hatch and grow, which she feeds with trophic eggs.
When the first adult individuals grow, the queen ant receives food from them, care for the eggs, and expansion of the anthill. Insects pile up garbage from the interior of their home at the entrance; large mounds are built, sometimes exceeding more than 2 meters.
How many ants are there in an anthill
A large anthill is populated by more than 1 ml of individuals, medium buildings are inhabited by 200,000-300,000 individuals. There are ants that do not build anthills, for example wandering ants, or as they are also called - nomadic ants.
What does an anthill look like from the inside?
Near the queen there are working individuals, the so-called retinue. They feed, care for, lick, and groom ant eggs. A month later they move to far zone protected area for work: searching for food, foraging. The food found is transmitted to higher authorities, after which the food is distributed throughout the anthill.
All ants are provided with information about the anthill and their queen. The queen emits pheramones, which are licked off by the caring individuals; thanks to a special crop, the ants pass them on to each other in a chain. In this way, complete information is provided.
There are cases when an ant is executed because it came without food several times.
The structure of the anthill deepens up to 2 meters from the inside; this is necessary not only for safety, but also for water extraction. Moisture is necessary for drinking, moisturizing pupae and larvae, and maintaining the microclimate.
Lifestyle
Ants have a hard-working lifestyle, which is why the mansions are built with amenities. There are rest rooms where insects sleep huddled together. Grain, dried insects, and seeds are stored in warehouses. In warm rooms live larvae and small ants, which are looked after and taken out for walks to play.
Ant Reproduction
Worker ants, females only. Every year at the same time, ants of different sexes with wings fly out for the reproduction process. Young winged ants fly out to mate, this process occurs in the air, after fertilization the females gnaw off their wings, do not eat or drink anything until the young individuals appear. Ant development stages: egg, larva, pupa. Males die of hunger, or they can be eaten by relatives; they are not needed. This is how ants reproduce.
Types of ants
Reaper Ant
The steppe reaper ant (European) is a very thrifty insect. Nutritional characteristics differ from their relatives. Reapers feed their larvae with ground plant grain, while their relatives feed their offspring with animal protein.
Stray Ants
Stray ants are constantly migrating, hence the name. When food runs out in a certain area, the insects line up in a column. Nomadic ants move every week, they do not have permanent place residence. At each rest stop, the workers build a temporary nest with their bodies, where the queen produces more than 20,000 eggs in a week. When moving in a column, nomadic ants carry eggs and larvae in the middle, and soldier ants walk on the sides. During the hike, insects actively hunt.
Red ants
The red forest ant has impressive dimensions, reaching 1 cm. The merit of the forest ant is in the construction of the largest anthills. Colonies of red forest ants live in solitary families. Sexual winged ants emerge to mate from May to early July, depending on the region.
The red forest ant benefits forests by destroying numerous pests. Forest ants love the sweet nectar of aphids, thereby causing harm fruit trees.
Fire ants
Fire ants are the most dangerous insects in his family. It has a sting hidden in its abdomen, with strong poison. Insects feed on protein and plant foods.
Fire ants, in addition to insects, caterpillars and larvae, are capable of hunting small mammals, sometimes amphibians. For this case, insects gather in a group and climb up the victim’s legs, digging into the body together. When fire ants, in large quantities, a toxic substance is injected, the animal can become poisoned and die within a few hours.
Fire ants can attack people while protecting their home; their bite causes pain and burns, and in some cases leads to death. This type of insect often makes nests in human homes. These are the most dangerous insects, called cannibal ants. In some countries, entire villages had to move due to the invasion of these pests.
The largest ant in the world is African; its uterus measures 6 cm. Next view In terms of height, the ant is a bulldog. Description: Working class - 2 cm, males 16-18 mm, soldiers - 26-28 mm, queen - 30-33 mm.
Lomehuza - killer
Ant killer - beetle - Lomechusa. A small beetle sneaks into the ant's nest and lays eggs. The ants try to fight it, but it emits a substance that has a narcotic effect on the ants. After licking this substance, the ants do not understand that it is a stranger and treat it as if it were their own family member.
Over time, under the influence of a euphoric state, the anthill ceases to live and reproduce normally. The individuals become incapacitated, the remaining ants are sick, and the anthill without eggs gradually dies. The ant killer has done its job.
The role of ants in nature
What benefits do ants bring to the forest and people? Ants loosen the soil, allowing oxygen to flow to the roots. Forest ants are forest nurses; they protect the forest from insect pests. How are ants useful? They saturate the soil useful elements: potassium, nitrogen, humus.
What role does ant venom play for humans? Ant venom is used in medicine to treat arthrosis, gout, sprains, varicose veins, back pain, and radiculitis. Today it is very fashionable to breed ant farms. A terrarium for ants is in demand, and interest in insects is growing. There are various types of insects available for sale.
vreditelistop.ru
Life of ants
Hardworking ants in constant trouble
The life of ants is an example of a collective, organized, family community, which is subject to the strict laws of group existence. They live everywhere. The exception is permafrost zones and the central parts of vast deserts. In nature, there are about 12 thousand species of ants, which differ in size, behavior, nutrition, and habitat. Their closest relatives are bees and wasps. The extremely complex biological life of tiny creatures has long attracted the attention of scientists and simply curious people. The insect family is clearly divided into three castes: sterile, wingless workers, reproductive females and males.
What does an ant insect look like?
Externally, the ant's body consists of three segments. The head is large, medium-sized chest and voluminous abdomen, at the end of which there is a sting. Previously, it was used for laying eggs, now - after changes - for protection and hunting.
Ant body structure
Distinctive feature This type of insect is the presence of a narrow waist between the abdomen and chest, as well as the presence of various glands. They produce special odorous substances. This smell helps to recognize your cohabitants and distinguish other people's relatives who come across on the way. For millions of years, insects have been exchanging encrypted data and creating secret paths. But people cannot yet understand the secret codes of the ants, so they cannot figure out how to control many tiny creatures.
Ants life, behavior
Stay active and organized throughout the day hardworking insects is amazing. All daylight hours they are in constant motion.
Ants tirelessly carry food into their home along their paths
Some carry food to the anthill, others are engaged in “ventilating” their home, others tirelessly look after their offspring and the herd of “domestic” breadwinners - aphids. Only in the evening do the ants return to their home. At night there are few insects on the surface of the anthill, so it is believed that they “sleep” until the morning. The life of ants is by no means easy. Fearless ants are not afraid of being discovered, because they are always ready to engage in battle with any enemy, despite his size.
Housing
An anthill can be considered as an organism. This complex, but unusually skillful living object is perfectly adapted not only to the changing seasons, but also to accidental damage.
The home of ants is a built anthill of needles and blades of grass.
There is a lot of trouble in the anthill, so the inhabitants are busy all day. Observations have established that the female queen lives about 20 years, and worker ants live about three years. Hard workers constantly produce so much food that they exceed their own needs by tens of times. Some of the workers carry building materials to build the nest. There is a special group of carrier ants that care for larvae and young workers and females. The actions of all family members are coordinated. It is a clear division of labor that is the key to their successful cohabitation and collective action in case of danger..
Farms
Ants are skilled “animal breeders”.
An ant takes care of its “pets” - aphids
They, like humans, are able to grow food supplies in the form of aphids, which they regularly “milk.” Aphids secrete a liquid called honeydew, which is used as food by “farmers.” Working individuals nurture their herd in order to feed the rest of the family members with a sweet substance. For the winter, female aphids are transferred to a warm anthill.
The ant is the most terrible predator on earth
Surprisingly this type insects constitute from 10 to 12% of the biological mass of all living organisms living on earth.
Ants drag a dead scorpion into an anthill
These tireless predators eat so many caterpillars, beetles and other insects that they total weight exceeds the prey of cats, wolves and bears combined. However, ants are capable of dealing with large mammals. In Africa and South America all fauna Indescribable horror engulfs you when a horde of ants moves to a new place, destroying all life in its path. The ribbon of ferocious predators is several dozen meters wide. This hungry, undaunted, invincible army knows no mercy. All living things: birds, predators, large herbivores, even elephants quickly leave the area of their movement. Whoever hesitates will soon be attacked by many “warriors” who, without much ceremony, will begin to bite and torment their prey. The migration of ants is scary, dangerous, and spectacular.
The two most dangerous species of ants in South America
Bullet Ant (Paraponera clavata)
Distributed in tropical forests from Paraguay to Nicaragua, forming colonies in the trunks of old trees. Large, growing up to 2.5 centimeters in length.
Ruthless killer ant bullet
Before attacking, it emits a piercing scream. The Aborigines nicknamed it the bullet ant because of its unusually strong bite, which feels like a gunshot wound. The pain is deep, constant, very aching. Comparable to walking on hot coals, accompanied by sharp pain from a three-inch rusty nail in the heel.
Soldier ants (Eciton burchellii)
Blind, ruthless killers equipped with powerful, massive mandibles are common along the banks of the Amazon. Their relatives can be found in the forests of Asia and Africa.
Blind killer ants soldiers
They belong to a species of huge ants - ferocious predators, whose length reaches one and a half centimeters. South Americans called them army ant soldiers. This is an army of mobile individuals who do not have a permanent home, are on the march and arrange a short stop for the queen to lay thousands of eggs and obtain offspring from them. They are capable of dismembering large animals, the size of a horse. Scientists suggest that blindness does not allow them to correctly assess the size of the prey, considering it a potential threat to the existence of the colony.
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starlotildar.ru
How do ants live
Ants Queen ant Worker antsLike a hive, an anthill is a complex social structure. The life of ants in nature is so organized and subject to the demands of the community that it is difficult to believe that insects lack intelligence. But an individual individual most definitely has only instincts. Version collective intelligence so far it has only appeared in science fiction novels. But even in the absence of reasonable actions, the ant community is able to build its own social ladder with its own “elevator”.
What is an anthill from the point of view of social structure
When talking about an anthill, the overwhelming majority of people imagine a mound in the forest or a hole in the ground, near which many small black or red biting insects are hovering. But “home” is not the most important thing in the life of ants. There are representatives who manage without a “base” at all. These are nomadic species that breed during breaks in bivouac nests. Others make their nests in trees to escape the annual tropical downpours. Synanthropic species of ants can organize a nest in the wall of a house or a ventilation hole.
If we consider these insects from the point of view of the community, then an anthill is a colony of organisms with individuals divided into classes according to the actions they perform:
- womb or queen;
- males;
- workers;
- soldiers.
Interesting!
Workers and soldiers are underdeveloped females, incapable of independent reproduction.
Ant social classes
Many different actions performed for normal functioning family of ants, led to the emergence of different classes of insects. Each individual strictly performs only its own duties, without trying to interfere in the affairs of a comrade. It is difficult to say whether these class layers can be classified as castes of ants, since in the “traditional” understanding, caste is a rather closed world.
In a caste society, the social “elevator” works exclusively downward. You can go down a step, but you cannot go up. The life of ants in an anthill goes through several stages, but it is impossible to understand whether the transition of an individual from nannies to foragers is an increase or decrease on the social ladder.
Queen
Ant queen
It is difficult to answer whether the queen is a privileged individual, since without her the life of the anthill loses its meaning. Worker ants cannot reproduce, but they are the ones who decide when to kill the queen who has reduced her reproductive rate. The more queens there are in an ant family, the less “respectful” the workers are to them. If we draw an analogy with human society, a comparison with a palace coup suggests itself.
Interesting!
A record life expectancy in laboratory conditions was recorded in the queen of the black garden ant (Lasius niger). She lived for 28 years.
Queens are long-lived. The average lifespan is 12 -20 years. Young queens have wings, which they chew off after fertilization. Sometimes some of the queens remain in the anthill, duplicating the old queens. The other part after the wedding summer finds convenient place and is preparing a new anthill.
Queens' resources are very limited. She may lay a small number of eggs the first time and often feeds the hatched larvae with eggs specially designed for this purpose. Because of this, in a new place in an anthill, several ants of the first generation are always very small, sometimes dwarf. Working insects begin to provide their anthill with food, and subsequent generations become larger and larger until they reach a normal size for the species.
Males
Coming out of hibernation, the queen makes the first clutch, from which new males and females emerge. Males also have wings. Their life is short. After mating, the males die, since parasites are not needed in the anthill.
Worker ants
Worker ants
Having fulfilled her duty to procreate, the queen begins to lay eggs, from which infertile females emerge - worker ants. The social structure of an anthill involves the division of worker ants into more specialized subclasses:
- Nannies. The youngest ants. Busy caring for eggs and larvae.
- Breadwinners. Ants courting the queen.
- Shepherds. In those species that contain aphids, special ants look after the “ladies”.
- Honeydew collectors. Insects that collect the sweet secretions of aphids.
- Mushroom growers. A specific class of leaf-cutter ants.
- Workers on the anthill. They are engaged in repairing the home, maintaining the necessary humidity in it and ventilating the anthill.
- Foragers. One of the last stages of insect life. They provide the anthill with food, collecting it everywhere. The lives of foragers are of little value. Among them is the highest percentage of deaths. The functions of foragers are performed by the oldest members of the anthill.
- Soldiers. The largest members of the ant family. They act as protectors of the anthill.
Throughout the life of an ant, the functions performed by the same individual change. For this reason, it is impossible to speak with confidence about the caste structure of the ant community.
Soldiers
A relatively privileged “class”, not excommunicated from the anthill, but essentially being very large and, most likely, the oldest representatives of the working class.
Lifespan of infertile females
When determining the lifespan of the bulk of insects in an ant community, one must take into account not so much calendar time as how ants live in each climate zone. And it’s better to count in months.
The lifespan of a non-hibernating insect in the tropical jungle is 1 year or 12 months. The lifespan of an ant near the polar zone is 3–4 years. But the latter are active only 3 months a year. The remaining 9 months of insects spend the winter - spent in suspended animation, in which the vital activity of their body slows down almost to zero. As a result, the life expectancy of a circumpolar ant is the same 12 months as that of a tropical ant.
notklop.ru
Ants in the apartment: description of the pest
Despite the diversity of these insects, there are only two species that prefer to live in a human home:
- Pharaoh ants with queen
Pharaonic;
- Ordinary black.
The first type includes the most different colors– from yellow to bright red. These insects are very small in size and are not so easy to detect in an apartment. Their body length is only 2 mm. Ants of this species cannot live outside, so they must use human housing as a home.
Common black ants are better suited to living on the street than in a human home. For them, an apartment is an inexhaustible source of food and a favorable habitat. Often a person himself brings them home from the street on clothes or other things. Their body length is about 4 mm and they are easier to spot.
There is also a separate subspecies of ants – thief ants. Most often they are found in private houses in nature. If there is an anthill near your home, it is likely that a colony of ants will soon visit you for supplies.
You need to know them by sight
Black ants with queen Not a single colony of ants can exist without its queen - the queen ant. It serves to reproduce new ants - lays eggs and raises young individuals. All the worker ants feed her and protect her from danger. If the queen dies, the entire anthill will die. First of all, you need to find and destroy it in order to make the fight against insects much faster and more effective.
The queen looks like an ordinary ant, only much larger and larger in size.
What do ants eat?
The most important reason for the appearance of ants at home is the search for food. The listed species of ants are omnivorous. They prefer sweet foods, such as sugar or leftover jam, but they may well enjoy a piece of bread or even spices. The most important danger ants pose as carriers infectious diseases. The most accessible place to look for food is the trash can, in which colonies of pathogenic bacteria grow over time. If you have ants at home, it is important to block their access to garbage - insects can crawl on a variety of surfaces and spread harmful microorganisms.
Individual workers live from several days to a year, and the anthill itself can exist for many years. The number of oviparous females can exceed several hundred, and the number of eggs laid can exceed several thousand. Therefore, it is very important to start pest control as early as possible to avoid their excessive reproduction.
Habitats
Ants prefer warm and humid places. Optimal place for their appearance - the bathroom or kitchen. Ants do not like lighting and react very negatively to light, so they prefer to live in very secluded corners of the apartment. This could be the space under the baseboard, cracks in the plaster, air spaces under the wallpaper, chambers under linoleum or parquet that does not fit tightly to the floor.
Reproduction rate
Ant eggsThe fertility and viability of the entire colony depends on the queen. The queen lives on average more than 10 years. In a human apartment, there are optimal conditions for the life and development of new ants, so the queen is able to lay eggs every year. Over the entire period of life, the number of eggs laid by one female exceeds 500 thousand. And in one anthill there can be several oviparous females.
The eggs hatch into larvae that are fed by the workers, after which they pupate and within a month and a half a new adult ant is born. Their reproduction rate is very fast; in just a few months they are able to occupy the entire kitchen and move to other rooms.
Ways to fight
There are many insecticidal agents, but not all of them are suitable for controlling ants. The primary task is to destroy the queen ant, which is located in a secluded place, well protected by worker ants. Most products are designed to instantly kill the insect, but this is ineffective, since only ordinary ants die, whose numbers will soon be restored. One of the most best methods The fight is to use gels. They contain slow-acting poisons, and the gel can go directly to the uterus as food.
According to scientists, ants can lift loads that exceed their own weight by 100 times. And they are somehow miraculously held upside down on absolutely smooth glass. These little insects are real workaholics. They can cover long distances and perform enormous amounts of work. What else is remarkable about the life of ants? How is work organized in an anthill? How can these insects do so much work?
Short existence
How many years do ants live? It is not possible to answer this question accurately. Their lifespan is determined by several factors. The main ones are the species and caste to which a particular ant belongs. Scientists have only approximate data on this matter:
- An ant, which is a worker species, can live for about 3 years. How smaller size individual, the shorter the time of its existence. Interestingly, insects living in northern, colder regions can boast longer lives.
- Males die quite quickly: just a few weeks after birth. During this time, they manage to complete their main task - mating. As soon as this happens, they are killed by relatives or predators.
- The lifespan of the queen (or queen) is longer than others. In some cases it reaches 20 years.
Some types of ants spend a certain period of time sleeping. During this period, their life processes slow down greatly. That's why active life such individuals are much shorter.
Who will live longer?
Other factors may also influence the duration of existence of a particular representative of a given species:
- Variety. There are bulldog ants and pharaoh ants. The first individuals, which belong to the working caste, live about 5 years, but the life of workers of the second type is only 2 months.
- Caste. Those who perform the duties of soldiers in the anthill will live longer than those who take care of the queen and offspring. The uterus, as mentioned above, lives the longest. The record is considered to be a lifespan of 28 years.
- Job. Individuals who spend most of their lives in the anthill will live longer than those who “serve” as soldiers or breadwinners. The latter are at greatest risk. They may die from the clutches of predators or simply not live to see the maximum possible life.
- Larva. The lifespan of ants also includes the period when they were at the larval stage.
- Ambient temperature. Individuals living in the cold are so-called long-livers.
Record breakers
All insects are united in colonies or families, each of which has its own rules and structure. Families, in turn, consist of several castes. Their representatives have certain responsibilities. Leaf-cutter ant families usually consist of 7 castes. Each of them is different in size and appearance insects. In addition, all castes perform one or more of the 29 functions.
Up to several million insects live in an ant family.
Almost all types of ants live in anthills. They build them themselves. In some cases, cavities in logs, soil, or under large boulders are used for this purpose. Sometimes ant families decide to live in the same house with people.
Family life is subordinate strict rules and routine. Each family member is familiar with their rights and responsibilities, and approaches their work responsibly and seriously. Contact between individuals occurs through chemical signals, so news spreads throughout the anthill very quickly.
Rules of the ant world
At the beginning of its life, an anthill is a small hole or cavity. A fertilized female lives in it. She doesn't eat or leave her shelter. The caring mother feeds the first offspring with special trophic eggs.
And so the larvae became real ants. They receive their first tasks, the most important of which are feeding the female, caring for new larvae and expanding their home.
All accumulated garbage is collected near the exit from the anthill. Ants form huge piles of it. Sometimes they reach 2 m in height.
How do these insects spend the winter? Over the course of several warm months, supplies are prepared so that the whole family can exist normally during the cold periods. At this time, the female does not produce offspring at all. All entrances and exits are tightly closed. Where the ground freezes heavily, the ants go into a state of hibernation. They are practically motionless. Their organs slow down.
Once a year, sexual individuals appear in the family - males and females fly out of their home and mate. As soon as the fertilization process comes to an end, the females go in search of a place for a new home. New anthills also appear when the family becomes too large. In this case, it is divided into several parts, each of which goes in search of its own home.
Among the most interesting facts about ants are the following:
- Ants are considered the most ancient insects. Their history goes back about 100 million years.
- Scientists have data on more than 8,500 species of ants.
- These insects are considered the most developed. In this respect, they came closer to man than others.
- The main job of each individual is to prepare for winter. At night, all supplies are hidden in the house, and in the morning they are taken out into the air to dry. Ants are very sensitive to weather changes, so they will never dry out supplies before it rains.
- Each anthill has its own hierarchy.
- An ant colony always moves in a strictly defined order. She will find her way to her home under any circumstances.
- Food is distributed among family members by the queen.
It should be noted the extraordinary sense of justice of insects of this species. They will never abandon their sick or crippled brothers, they will take care of them and even feed them.
Needless to say, ants are an example of altruism and hard work. They are fair and very organized. Even people have something to learn from them.
The social structure of ants cannot but amaze: not only are there females, males, and workers among them, but there are also species that contain slaves in their nest, who, being larvae, were taken captive from another anthill. True, these slaves perform the same functions that they would do in their nest, only they take care of the descendants of a foreign species, not their own.
Despite the fact that absolutely all types of ants are predators, they not only catch or pick up prey, but also grow mushrooms, keep livestock, which is aphid, and are the only creatures in the world, with the exception of humans, conducting agricultural activities.
Black, red, red ants belong to a family of insects that belongs to the superfamily Antidae from the order Hymenoptera, which also includes wasps, bees, ichneumon wasps, sawflies and gall moths. In total there are more than 13 thousand species of ants, most of which lives in tropical latitudes (for comparison: 1,150 species live in the Palearctic, about three hundred in Russia).
The number of this family, according to various sources, ranges from 10 to 25% of the biomass of all terrestrial creatures. True, their weight is extremely small. For example, in the Amazon forests there are 800 million ants per square kilometer, while in total all forest ants weigh half as much as the rest of the inhabitants of the area.
Red, black and red ants are distributed throughout the world. It is worth noting that not only forest and garden ants, but also ants in the house are a common occurrence. They are not found except in cold Antarctica and several islands located far from the continent.
Insects build anthills wherever they can, using mostly soil and plants for construction. Their nests can be seen everywhere: on the ground, under stones, in logs, underground; if they happen to settle in a house, they can build an anthill there too. An anthill should never be built in areas with dead insects, as this indicates the presence of disease or other danger.
Such good adaptability is largely due to excellent social organization, the ability to use various resources and maneuverability in their life activities: if necessary, they will easily change their place of residence.
Description
In nature there are yellow, red, black, red ants, and many of them are not monochromatic, and combine these colors in their coloring.
Speaking about the ant, it should be borne in mind that depending on the species, its size can range from 1 to 50 mm and even more.
Red ants from the genus Mohomorium are considered the smallest: the length of working individuals is 1-2 mm, females and males - from 23 to 4 mm. As for the largest representatives, for example, African males of Dorylus can reach 3 cm, and the uterus during the maturation of eggs, thanks to a greatly enlarged abdomen, reaches five centimeters.
Despite the fact that ants' vision is poorly developed (and some are completely blind), they distinguish vibrations and movement very well. Their vision is successfully replaced by antennae located on the head, which detect chemicals, sense the movement of air masses; in addition, with their help, insects transmit and receive signals through touch.
The upper jaws (mandibles) of ants are so strong that they successfully use them to carry food and manipulate different objects, build an anthill and successfully defend yourself. Interestingly, in some species these jaws open 270° and snap shut like traps at speeds of up to 230 km/h.
Lifestyle
An ant family is formed over many years, as a result of which the number of inhabited anthills can be several million (these are already colonies located near each other over vast territories).
Ant society is divided into three castes: females, males and workers. Taking into account the class, a division of labor occurs, and everyone is required to perform their functions at the proper level - from the queen to the worker (if they fail to cope with their duties, the queen is removed, the worker is killed).
It is not difficult to distinguish representatives of the three castes by external features: while females and males have wings, workers (females with an underdeveloped reproductive system) do not. True, after fertilization, the queen’s wings usually either fall off, or she chews them off for herself, but even in this case, she can be distinguished by her enormous size.
While queens and workers emerge primarily from fertilized eggs, which contain the two sets of chromosomes they received from the egg and sperm, males emerge from unfertilized ones. Before turning into an adult, the red, red, black ant goes through the stages of egg, larva and pupa.
Uterus
One nest can contain from one to several females capable of producing offspring (queen). These individuals differ in appearance more large sizes and before fertilization have wings.
The female mates only once in her entire life, taking off after the male when a certain moment approaches (this process is called mating flight). There are species that mate with only one male, and others with several dozen. As a result, the uterus receives a supply of sperm in an amount that it consumes throughout its life, and it lives from twelve to twenty years.
After fertilization, the queen either leaves and forms her own family, or remains in the old anthill. If she leaves, she must find a new place for the nest, create the first “room”, and some time later begin laying eggs in it.
At the same time, in some species, the queen, in anticipation of the first offspring, leaves the anthill in search of food, in others, she sits incessantly on eggs and larvae, maintaining her existence with the help of fat reserves. The queen feeds the larvae with “food” eggs or with the help of the salivary secretion she secretes.
Due to the fact that no one helps her look after the first cubs, the first individuals turn out to be very small, one might even say dwarf.
It will be interesting to know about the queen ant that, contrary to popular belief, she is not the center of the family: the more queens in the nest, the less respectful they are treated. For example, they can give it to another anthill where there is no queen, and even kill it if fertility has decreased, after raising a new queen.
Males
Almost all males, with a few exceptions, emerge from unfertilized eggs, and therefore are carriers of only one set of chromosomes, the maternal one. Almost all of them have wings, and they fight so fiercely among themselves for young females that they often die. In fact, their entire role is reduced to fertilizing young queens, so after mating they die.
Workers
The overwhelming number of individuals are workers, females with an underdeveloped reproductive system, whose main task is to take care of the family living in the anthill. They do not have wings, they are not as large as females, they have smaller eyes, and in some species they are completely absent. The roles between workers are distributed largely depending on the characteristics of their body:
- Soldiers are large workers with disproportionately large heads and strong jaws (mandibles) that they can use effectively during combat. While there is no fighting, they perform the same functions as other working red or black ants;
- Nurses, as a rule, are young insects who look after the larvae, who tell them whether a red or black ant of what social status will appear. If necessary, they destroy excess female larvae (this is done to control the number of individuals capable of creating offspring) or change their feeding regime, creating a working individual;
- Foragers - scour in search of food and, having found it, inform the rest of the ants, laying marks to the nest using pheromones.
Among the ants there are builders (monitor the condition of the nest, dig tunnels, repair it), cleaners (clean the anthill and carry dead insects beyond its boundaries), honey barrels (keep reserves of liquid carbohydrate food), shepherds (graze livestock on the leaves, whose role is played by aphids) and representatives of other “professions”.
If it turns out that a worker is not engaged in his duties and copes poorly with them, he changes his profession, for example, a forager turns into a nanny. Insects and old ants do not abandon in trouble: they become watchmen, food keepers or observers. An equally interesting fact is that they care for the wounded and dying: they bring them food, for example, feed them the juice that aphids secrete until they are able to consume it.
Pheromones in the life of insects
Quite a lot important role In the life of insects, glands play a role that secrete various substances; with the help of some, for example, pheromones, they communicate. For example, foragers fix the food they discover with the help of pheromones, and mark the road until all the food is in the anthill (as soon as this happens, they stop marking the road with pheromones, and the smell dissipates).
This method allows the ants to cope with unexpected obstacles: if an obstacle suddenly appears on the way, the foragers begin their work. Having found new way, they mark the path to the anthill, and its relatives begin their journey along the laid route.
Another interesting fact about the ant is its ability, with the help of pheromones, to communicate about the family during the exchange of food (what it currently needs, for example, what kind of food or the need for work in the nest).
Also speaking about the ant, it should be borne in mind that each of them has glands that they use for defense and attack (they are poisonous and almost all species have a sting). For example, some glands produce an acidic secretion, while many of the poisons they produce are characterized by the presence of complex compounds in combination with allergenic proteins. If a black worker ant finds itself in trouble, in order to protect the nest, it commits suicide: as a result of a specific muscle contraction, its abdomen ruptures and the secretion of the gland, which contains substances that glue the enemy, is sprayed out in all directions.
Physical signals
Naturally, insects can communicate with each other not only with the help of pheromones, but also with sounds (some species chirp using abdominal segments), as well as touches (for example, begging for food). There are two opposing opinions: some scientists are convinced that they are absolutely deaf, others categorically disagree with this.
However, it is known for sure that insects sense the vibration of solid bodies very well, and some species definitely make sounds while at the pupal stage. For example, a black ant that has not yet been born communicates its social status to working nannies.
Nutrition
It can be said about ants that almost all of them are predators, scavengers, and also feed on plant foods (adults eat carbohydrate foods, larvae eat protein foods). They find food not only on the ground, but also an ant on a tree in search of food is a common occurrence. For protein food, they eat invertebrates, mainly insects: they pick up corpses, hunt and even raise livestock (aphids).
They get carbohydrate food from honeydew: it is given to them in abundance by their cattle and aphids (except that aphids secrete a special liquid, which red, red and black ants eat with pleasure, and the aphids themselves act as meat). They also feed on seeds, plant sap, nectar, and mushrooms (they often grow the mushrooms they need on their own).
They take all the prey to the anthill, where they distribute it among themselves (they never eat on the side). There are species that have a process in the esophagus, nicknamed the “social stomach”: in it, insects store food during transportation, and, having delivered it to the place, remove it, and then distribute it among the ants.
Role in society
Speaking about the ant, it should be noted that it performs many functions that are useful both for nature and for humans. For example, it saturates the soil with oxygen, and forest ants, as well as residents of fields and gardens, regulate the number of insect pests with their active predatory behavior.
In some cases, this activity also causes damage, primarily for silkworms: by eating their caterpillars, the red or black ant extremely harms the entire industry.
The ability of these insects to make the most of the resources available to them often leads to conflict with humans. For example, since they often raise their “livestock” for cultivated plants, aphids, feeding on sap, often destroy the crop. Insects often invade people's homes, gradually increasing the colony; if they are not stopped in time, they will at least begin to spoil food, spreading various infections.
The relationship between an ant and a person is ambiguous. If in some farms these insects are specially bred so that they help in work, then in others, on the contrary, entire programs are developed in order to fight them as pests.
Such actions are becoming more and more successful: if previously the fight against ants was carried out more traditional methods, using substances that do not harm the environment, and are unsuccessful, then now various chemicals make it possible to get rid of them in the house in just a few days.
But controlling the population in vegetable gardens, orchards and fields is not so easy: therefore, measures are more aimed at controlling the number of colonies, while most attempts have a short-term effect. Moreover, such a fight against ants requires a lot of caution, since inhaling such toxic fumes is harmful, especially for asthmatics and allergy sufferers.
Like a hive, an anthill is a complex social structure. The life of ants in nature is so organized and subject to the demands of the community that it is difficult to believe that insects lack intelligence. But an individual individual most definitely has only instincts. The version of collective intelligence has so far only appeared in science fiction novels. But even in the absence of reasonable actions, a community is able to build its own social ladder with its own “elevator”.
What is an anthill from the point of view of social structure
It is difficult to answer whether it is a privileged individual, since without it the life of an anthill loses its meaning. Worker ants cannot reproduce, but they are the ones who decide when to kill the queen who has reduced her reproductive rate. The more queens there are in an ant family, the less “respectful” the workers are to them. If we draw an analogy with human society, a comparison with a palace coup suggests itself.
Interesting!
A record life expectancy in laboratory conditions was recorded in the queen of the ant species (Lasius niger). She lived for 28 years.
Queens are long-lived. The average lifespan is 12 -20 years. Young queens, which they gnaw off after fertilization. Sometimes some of the queens remain in the anthill, duplicating the old queens. The other part, after the mating summer, finds a convenient place and prepares a new anthill.
Queens' resources are very limited. She may lay a small number of eggs the first time and often feeds the hatched larvae with eggs specially designed for this purpose. Because of this, in a new place in an anthill, several ants of the first generation are always very small, sometimes dwarf. Working insects begin to provide their anthill with food, and subsequent generations become larger and larger until they reach a normal size for the species.
Males
Coming out of hibernation, the queen makes the first clutch, from which new males and females emerge. Males also have wings. Their life is short. Afterwards, the males die, since parasites are not needed in the anthill.
Having fulfilled her duty to procreate, the queen begins to lay eggs, from which infertile females emerge - worker ants. The social structure of an anthill involves the division of worker ants into more specialized subclasses:
- Nannies. The youngest ants. Busy caring for eggs and larvae.
- Breadwinners. Ants courting the queen.
- Shepherds. In those species that, special ants look after the “ladies”.
- Honeydew collectors. Insects that collect the sweet secretions of aphids.
- Mushroom growers. A specific class of leaf-cutter ants.
- Workers on the anthill. They are engaged in repairing the home, maintaining the necessary humidity in it and ventilating the anthill.
- Foragers. One of the last stages of insect life. They provide an anthill by collecting it everywhere. The lives of foragers are of little value. Among them is the highest percentage of deaths. The functions of foragers are performed by the oldest members of the anthill.
- Soldiers. The largest members of the ant family. They act as protectors of the anthill.
Throughout the life of an ant, the functions performed by the same individual change. For this reason, it is impossible to speak with confidence about the caste structure of the ant community.
Soldiers
A relatively privileged “class”, not excommunicated from the anthill, but essentially being very large and, most likely, the oldest representatives of the working class.
Lifespan of infertile females
When determining the bulk of insects in an ant community, one must take into account not so much calendar time as how ants live in each climate zone. And it’s better to count in months.
The lifespan of a non-hibernating insect in the tropical jungle is 1 year or 12 months. The lifespan of an ant near the polar zone is 3–4 years. But the latter are active only 3 months a year. The insects spend the remaining 9 months in suspended animation, in which the vital activity of their body slows down almost to zero. As a result, the life expectancy of a circumpolar ant is the same 12 months as that of a tropical ant.
All ants are social insects living with families. In families different types There are from several tens to several million individuals. Those ants that we usually see are the so-called worker individuals, or simply workers, or rather, sterile females with undeveloped wings. But once a year, winged female and male ants appear in the nests. Females are similar to workers, but differ from them in the structure of their breasts and, as a rule, in larger sizes; Males have an elongated cylindrical abdomen or a posteriorly narrowed abdomen, and a relatively small head with large bulging eyes. Their antennae are longer than those of workers, and sometimes they are not geniculate, but thread-like. Males are often colored differently than workers. In red wood ants, for example, the head and chest of workers and females are partly red, while males are entirely black.
As they grow older, males and females begin to approach the exit of the nest and sometimes even come to the surface, but only for a short time. And now comes the marriage season. You have probably observed it more than once in the black garden ant, a common inhabitant of populated areas. Females and males leave the nests and accumulate at the entrances, then begin to climb onto blades of grass, onto trees, onto the walls of houses and take off from there. More agile males often take off straight from the ground. Females and males from different nests mate in the air or on the ground, soon after this the males die, and the fertilized females shed their wings and go in search of a nest site. During summer, such females run around on the ground in large numbers.
If you catch such females and put them in test tubes with soil, you can observe the entire process of forming a new family. The best objects for observation are black garden ants, brown forest ants and yellow earthen ants or any of the myrmic species. It is better to plant 2-3 female black garden ants in one test tube. The female builds a small closed chamber in the ground and then begins laying eggs. Sometimes several females make such a chamber together. Ant eggs are very small, about 0.5 mm long. They are always glued together into a common lump. The female licks and sorts them from time to time, and glues each newly laid egg to the lump. After 2-3 weeks, the first larvae begin to emerge from the eggs. Young larvae remain in a common clump, larger ones are placed in groups or separately on the floor of the chamber, and sometimes (in species of small ants) they are suspended on the walls of the chamber. After 4-6 months. The larvae finish growing and pupation begins. By this time they become larger than worker ants. In representatives of the formicine subfamily, before pupation, the larva usually wraps itself in a cocoon (such cocoons are usually called “ant eggs”), while in myrmicines the pupae are always open. Until the first workers emerge from the pupae, the females do not feed on anything. Moreover, they even feed the larvae with secretions of special glands. At the same time, the flight muscles, which the female will never need again, completely disappear, and she uses up the fat reserves that she accumulated in the parental nest. The female also feeds part of the laid eggs to large larvae.
After the first workers emerge from the pupae, they make their way out of the chamber and begin to forage for food. From this moment on, the female only lays eggs. All work in the nest is undertaken by the workers. They care for the brood (eggs, larvae and pupae), build and expand the nest, clean it of debris, protect it from enemies, and obtain food. From year to year the population in the nest grows, the nest increases in size. And finally, such a number is reached when the family can independently raise winged females and males. In this case, we say that the family has reached the first stage of maturity. In many species, the family development cycle ends here. Of course, the family can exist for many more years, but its numbers and the nature of the relationships between the ants hardly change. However, in some species, such as red wood ants, family development continues, and families can reach a second stage of maturity, when they become possible reproduction ant families by division. At some distance from the parent nest, a daughter nest, or layering, is built, where part of the workers of the family moves with the brood and a young female.
If there is one fertile female in a family, the family is called monogynous; if there are many, it is called polygynous. The number of females in polygynous families of red wood ants reaches several hundred.
In most species, only young or weak families are monogamous. However, there are species of ants (for example, the red-breasted carpenter ant) that cannot have polygynous families. If two oviparous females appear in a nest of this species, the workers kill one of them. This phenomenon is called obligate monogyny.
In laboratory conditions, individual working individuals can live up to 3-4 years. There is a known case when an ant lived for seven years. But under natural conditions, the population of an anthill is almost completely renewed throughout the year, so that on average a worker ant lives for about a year. Females live much longer - up to 20 years. A family of ants can, in principle, live forever, since workers constantly replace aged females with young ones. In our country, constant observations of anthill complexes of red forest ants have been carried out since 1962 in the Prioksko-Terrasny Nature Reserve and since 1966 in the Verkhne-Klyazminsky forestry of the Moscow region. Over the years, many anthills have remained in their original locations. At the end of the last century, the famous myrmecologist August Forel wrote about an anthill that was 90 years old.
Between members of the ant family there is a division of functions, or polyethism, which can be age-specific or caste-based. Age-related polyethism is understood as a natural change in the range of work performed by an ant in the nest throughout its life. Usually the youngest workers are nannies, i.e. care for the brood and the female. Having matured a little, they become builders, and then foragers (food getters). The oldest ants, which are no longer capable of obtaining food, become guards or observers. Caste polyethism refers to differences in the range of work among ants of the same age, due to differences in their size or structure. For example, for the red-breasted carpenter ant, the foragers are mainly small workers with small heads. At the same time, large large-headed workers (“soldiers”) of the same age are engaged in protecting the nest or are food keepers. Food delivered by foragers is stored in the crops of these ants and serves as a reserve for the family in case of bad weather.
A special place is occupied by “freeloader” ants, which settle close to the nests of other ant species and live at their expense. Thus, in our forests, the shiny tiny ant is quite common, living in the nests of red forest, meadow, red-headed and slender-headed ants. The tiny chambers of this ant's nests are located between the chambers of the host's nests, to which they are connected by thin passages. The diameter of such a passage is about 1 mm, and therefore the host ants cannot reach their cohabitants. Baby ants pick up food scraps from their host ants. Sometimes they even attach themselves to their owners at the moment when one worker passes a drop of liquid food to another, and manages to drink from this drop unnoticed. These ants live well in captivity along with red wood ants. Watching them is very interesting.
The basis of nutrition for almost all of our ants is made up of two components - protein and carbohydrates. Various invertebrates, mainly insects, are used as a source of protein food. Ants hunt them or collect corpses. The main source of carbohydrate food for ants is the honeydew secretion of aphids and other proboscis insects (bugs, scale insects, some leafhoppers). The relationship between ants and aphids (trophobiosis) is one of the most striking examples of symbiosis in the insect world. Aphids provide ants with food, and the ants protect them from enemies, carry them to fresh shoots of plants, and sometimes even take them to an anthill for the winter. In order to observe the relationship between aphids and ants, it is best to find an anthill of meadow ants or red forest ants, near which there is a birch tree. Ants always walk along the trunks of those trees on which there are colonies of aphids, and the abdomen of ants descending down is often greatly swollen with honeydew and is even translucent. By following the ants' climbing routes, you'll likely find aphids at the ends of thin branches. Some ants breed aphids herbaceous plants, and some, for example the yellow earth ant, nest in special chambers on the roots of grasses.
In addition to honeydew and insects, ants can feed on plant sap, nectar, mushrooms, and seeds, but this food is not their main food. Thus, according to long-term observations of West German researcher G. Wellenstein, in the diet of red forest ants, honeydew makes up 62% (by weight), insects and other invertebrates - 33%, plant sap - 4.5%, mushrooms and carrion - 0.3% and seeds -0.2%
Although seeds make up an insignificant share in the diet of forest ants, they are very important for the life of the forest. The fact is that many forest herbs, such as hoofweed, violets, wildflowers, scilla and some other plants, are spread exclusively by ants. The seeds of these plants have special appendages (elasmosomes) that are eaten by ants; The ants do not touch the seeds. But usually, before gnawing off the appendage, the ants drag the seed a considerable distance. The dispersal of seeds by ants is called myrmecochory. Steppes and deserts are home to ants that feed almost exclusively on seeds, such as harvester ants. These insects eat the whole seeds: they serve as a source of proteins and carbohydrates for them. True, these ants also play an important role in the dispersal of seeds, since some of them are lost when transferred to the nest. Among our ants, seeds make up a significant proportion of the sod ant's diet.
All the food that the ants collect is brought to the nest and there distributed among all family members. Protein food is the “building material” from which the body of ants is formed during the process of metabolism. Carbohydrates are the main source of energy, that is, “fuel” for these insects. After emerging from the pupa, ants no longer grow, but they move a lot. Therefore, the basis of their food is carbohydrates. Sedentary larvae, on the contrary, require little “fuel”, and the basis of their food is proteins. Adult larvae are usually fed insect pieces. Ants feed young larvae with secretions of special glands and special food eggs, which differ increased content yolk. Feeding eggs are laid not only by females, but also by young worker ants. It is clear that ants that feed larvae with gland secretions or lay food eggs consume much more protein food than builders or foragers.
Liquid food is distributed in the nest by trophallaxis. The forager collects honeydew into the goiter, which is separated from the stomach by a valve, so that the food stored in it is not digested. Having arrived at the nest, the forager takes a characteristic pose, opens its jaws, and a drop of liquid protrudes from its mouth (see figure). One or more ants approach him, drink this drop, and soon all the food is pumped from the crop of the forager to the crops of other individuals. They, in turn, transfer food in the same way to other ants, and thus the portion brought is distributed among the family. Experiments using radioactive isotopes have shown that one portion of food in red wood ants is distributed among 100 or more individuals after 20 hours. If a lot of liquid food enters the nest, some of it accumulates in the crops of a certain group of keepers. These are usually large young ants. This creates a food supply in case of bad weather. Some steppe ants (the so-called honey ants) have guardians who form a special caste (“honey barrels”). Such individuals are capable of storing in the crop an amount of food several times greater than the mass of the ant itself.
In addition to food distribution, trophallaxis plays another important function in social insect families. The fact is that ants and other social insects constantly lick each other, females and brood. The effusion containing glandular secretions is mixed into food and distributed throughout the family by trophallaxis. Thus, the ants “learn” about the presence or absence of a female, “estimate” the amount of brood in the nest, etc. Depending on incoming information, the behavior of ants may change. Thus, trophallaxis, as it were, unites the family and plays an important role in regulating the activities of individual ants.
The territory in which ants from one nest obtain food is called the family's feeding area. Within this territory, each individual forager has its own individual plot. Sometimes it represents a sector within the family's feeding area, the top of the sector being the entrance to the nest. In such cases, the forager begins searching for prey almost immediately after leaving the nest. The radius of the feeding area of a family of such species will be small and will equal to length the largest search flight of foragers. This type of use of the feeding area is characteristic of primitive ants, for example, myrmic. In highly organized ants, for example, red forest ants, individual plots Foragers can be removed from the nest at a great distance - up to several tens of meters. In this case, the ant gets to its site along the road and only when it arrives does it begin its search. In red wood ants, the areas furthest from the nest are occupied by the youngest foragers. Gradually, as the occupied areas become vacant, they move closer and closer to the nest and at the end of their lives they become observers on the dome. Some species (many Formica, odorous carpenter ant) protect the boundaries of the family's feeding area from ants from other families of the same species or other species that also protect their area. In this case, we are not talking about a feeding area, but about a protected area. Most ant species do not guard the entire feeding area, but only the area in the immediate vicinity of the entrance to the nest.
Sometimes the forager finds such an amount of food in his area that he himself cannot bring it to the nest. He is faced with the task of collecting other ants who would help him quickly transfer all the food to the nest, that is, organize group foraging. After all, if this is not done, ants from another nest or some other insects may find food.
There are several ways to organize group foraging. Firstly, an ant can use specific movements, sounds or odorous substances secreted by special glands to attract the attention of other individuals nearby. This method of organizing group foraging is called self-mobilization. The second method is nonspecific activation of foragers. An ant that has discovered food (scout) returns to the nest and there excites other ants. However, his message does not contain information about where the food is located, nor what kind of food it is. Excited foragers go out to their individual areas. But as a result, the number of ants in the colony's feeding area increases sharply, and this increases the likelihood that other ants will accidentally find the same food source. Most effective remedy organizing group foraging - mobilization. Mobilization refers to a set of actions by a scout, which leads to the fact that other ants precisely go to the place where food was discovered. Methods of mobilization can vary greatly among different ant species. So, for example, in all species of myrmik, the scout activates some foragers with tactile signals (touching the antennae). They line up behind the scout in a chain, which he leads to the feeder. In the black garden ant, the scout leaves an odorous trail with the end of its abdomen on the way from the feeder to the nest. In the nest, like myrmics, it activates other foragers, and they follow the trail to find the feeder. The mobilization process is easy to observe if you place a feeder with sugar syrup at some distance from the nest. It is even more convenient to conduct these observations in the laboratory on families in artificial nests, since in this case you can see all the actions of the scout in the nest.
This is where we'll end brief overview basic information about the biology of ants. Some additional information is given in this book in the introductory sections of other chapters. But before moving on to a specific description of methods for studying ants and problems that can be solved by schoolchildren, we should dwell on the question of the benefits and harms of ants. They often write and say that ants are useful and therefore they must be protected. But this statement is not entirely true, and its consequences are erroneous and sometimes simply harmful practical recommendations. The fact is that in nature there are no harmful or useful species. There are situations in which one or another species can be either harmful or beneficial to humans. For example, hares are bred and protected in hunting farms (here they are useful as an object of amateur or commercial hunting), but in gardens these animals are real pests. The same is true with ants. Harvester ants, for example, are very useful in the virgin steppe, where they disperse plant seeds. But, settling near the currents where grain is threshed, they become pests. The nest-building activity of ants is, as a rule, beneficial, since the soil improves as a result. But in hay meadows, earthen hummocks of ant nests or domes of thin-headed ants’ homes interfere with mowing the grass.
A completely different picture is observed if red forest ants settle in gardens. On fruit trees they breed aphids, which suck the juice not from the vessels of the trunk and thick branches (as in coniferous forests), and from plant phloem. As a result, the leaves and shoots of apple, pear or plum trees are severely damaged, which leads to crop losses and sometimes the death of fruit trees. At the same time, the main pests of fruit trees, such as the codling moth or the currant moth, live secretly and are almost inaccessible to ants; therefore, the ants cannot compensate for the harm they cause by protecting aphids. That is why red forest ants should under no circumstances be relocated to gardens or lawns in the city, since, on the one hand, the garden is damaged, and on the other hand, the anthills in the forests are weakened, i.e. where they really make a difference.
