Wild About Ants » The Consult-ant

Reader Question: Ants for Ant Farms in Australia

Roberta — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 19:46:03 +0000

Just had a question come in from a young ant enthusiast (edited):

If you have heard of an Ant-O-Sphere(eight pods) I’m trying to make a colony in there but so far the bulldog ants are too big and the Argentine ants are too small.

I don’t know what other ants I can find in Australia (where I live) Victoria Mornington.

I wonder is there an ant shop in Victoria?

I’m not familar with Australian ants at all, so I’m going to put this out to you the reader. Do you have any helpful suggestions?

It is easy to imagine that neither bull ants nor Argentine ants would be really the best choices for an ant farm. It also seems likely the Argentine ants are probably chasing out the local species of ants (see reference below), like they have done in California.

Does anyone out there have any ideas of suitable Australian ants that might be available and good for use in an ant farm?

References:

Argentine ants give weeds a boost at ABC Science

Ants of Australia

Reader Question About Ants Indoors

Roberta — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 18:36:13 +0000

Hi,

I have a colony of miniscule black ants living in a large potted Jade plant which I keep on my kitchen counter in the winter and outside in the summer. I let them live inside for the last 2 winters because they’re miniscule, and aren’t at all invasive in terms of getting into food and were contained to a small area. Recently they’re just starting to get out of hand, traveling further along the counters than before and they’ve expanded to a second, small potted plant on the window sill. I realized this when I picked up the pot one day and there were several bigger ants (queens?) under there and some eggs which the tiny ants quickly started moving about. They settled down after I replaced the pot.

My main question is about something going on this morning. There was a huge highway of ants going from one pot to the other, appearing to be ushering along one of these queen ants, and also some were carrying eggs. I cruelly killed the queen and some of the surrounding ants. Ok, well I figured I was either doing crowd control or helping them get rid of an invader ant. My main objective was to clear away the majority of ants before my monthly house cleaners arrived, and would surely kill the whole highway if they saw them (normally I try to clean the counters really well before the cleaners arrive, so minimal ants will be out and about). But a half hour later, the highway was still in full force, ushering another one of these big ants. I ended up putting up a sign asking the cleaners not to kill them. But do you have any idea what was going on in this scenario?

Any info or guesses would be very appreciated!

Sylvia

First of all, I am impressed that you have been so tolerant of these little creatures. That’s wonderful! Also, I am sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you. The consult-ant e-mails got eaten in a computer snafu.

If you are still curious about your ants, I am going to go out on a limb and guess they might be rover ants. Some of the clues are your use of the term “miniscule,” because these ants definitely seem like walking dust specks. Also, the fact they are living in a potted plant is a tipoff, because that is a common behavior of rover ants. The third clue is that they were tolerable, for the most part, because they don’t really get into stuff in an aggressive way.

What probably caused them to tip towards nuisance status is that the new queens and males were getting ready to swarm. The new queens were the bigger ants you noticed. Simplifying a bit, swarming is when the queens and males fly up into the air, mate, and then the queens fly off to find a place to start a new colony.

The colony often gets super active around the time of swarming. Because they are indoors, they are likely to parade around and then go back into the flower pot, because they can’t get away to fly. This might go on for a couple of weeks, until the ants find a way out.

The good news is that swarming is temporary. Once the queens and males have flown away, the colony should return to its usual docile behavior.

If you click on the tags rover ants or Brachymyrmex in the sidebar of the blog, you can see several other posts I have written about these ants.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions, or if you think you have a different kind of ant. Good luck with your ant watching!

Rover ants (Brachymyrmex sp.)

Rover ant reproductives milling about on a windowsill, getting ready to swarm.

Rover ant reproductive (virgin queen)

A tiny male rover ant trying to launch himself from my keyboard.

(Note: As I mentioned previously, I have been the “Consult-Ant” on the Leaping from the Box website. I answer questions about ants and ant farms. From now on I will post the answers here, and when Karen has time she will also post the answers on her site.)

Reader Question About the Origin of Ants

Roberta — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:21:07 +0000

Dear Consult-Ant,

A couple of students and I are researching ants.   We have a series of questions we would like to know answers to and we were wondering if you could help us?   Our questions are:

- Where do ants come from?
- What was the first ant species discovered?
- What did the first ant species look like?
- What did the first ants eat?
- Is there an ant species that are extinct?
– How and when were ants created?

It would be appreciated if you could help us.

Yours sincerely

Dylan

Your questions are great ones, and it turns out that we are getting more and more information to help answer them all the time. I am no expert in this area, however. I will start the conversation and perhaps someone more current in the topic will stop by and clarify.

1. Where do ants come from?

From your other questions, I assume you mean where did the first ants come from, and not where do new ants colonies that show up in your backyard come from. If I have misread your question, please let me know.

To answer, it is helpful to look at the “family tree” of the Order Hymenoptera.

(Note: This is a roughly-drawn family tree for the layperson to show the relationships between major groups of Hymenoptera. If you are unfamiliar with sawflies, here is a brief overview.)

As you can see from this illustration, the ants are smack-dab in the middle of the wasps. Ants are essentially wasps with wingless workers that live in social groups.

2. What was the first ant species discovered?

The first ants are thought to have shown up during the Cretaceous period, the time when the land was dominated by dinosaurs.

Scientists examine fossils to piece together details of prehistoric life. It isn’t all that easy to find insect fossils, however, so they have to rely on insects trapped in deposits of amber (hardened tree resin).

This lovely photograph of ants trapped in amber was taken by Mila Zinkova at Wikimedia.

E.O. Wilson, Frank Carpenter and William L. Brown, Jr. (1967) described the first wasp-ant from mid-Cretaceous amber as the extinct species, Sphecomyrma freyi. They were not completely sure it was an ant because they couldn’t see whether it had a metapleural gland (a gland ants have on the sides of their mid-sections, but which wasps lack). Dave Grimaldi took up the challenge, and he and his colleagues verified Specomyrma freyi did have a metapleural gland and was indeed an ant. They also found a total of four genera and eight species in the extinct ant subfamily, Sphecomyrminae. The earliest are from French and Burmese amber.

Since that time other ant species, both extinct and living have been found. It seems like they are all jockeying for position to be the “first ant.”

The other contenders:

Nothomyrmecia macrops – an early favorite, this living species from Australia shows transitional features of ants and wasps
Cariridus – an extinct ant found in Brazilian amber, assigned to the subfamily Myrmecinae (same as Nothomyrmecia)
Armaniinae or Armaniidae – Extinct. Are they wasps or are they ants? No one knows for sure yet.
Martialis heureka – A newly discovered living species of ant from the Amazonian rainforest, it was so different it rated its own subfamily, Martialinae

As more early ants are found in amber, the beginnings of the Formicidae (ant family) will become clearer.

3. What did the first ant species look like?

As alluded to above, the first ants most likely looked like wingless wasps. There are photographs of Sphecomyrma freyi available on the Internet, for example at The Ant Farm and Myrmecology Forum . Even if it isn’t the first ant, it was probably similar.

Sphecomyrma freyi has characteristics of both ants and wasps.
Ant characteristics:

metapleural gland present
structure of petiole (waist)

Wasp charactistics:

mandible structure
tibial spurs wasp-like

Ants are known for having “elbowed” antennae, that is the first segment attached to the head is long, forming the scape. The first segment of the antennae of Sphecomyrma freyi are slightly longer than in wasps, but not as long as that of modern ants.

You can also see a drawing of Cariridus by downloading the full text of: Carlos Roberto F. Brandão, Rafael G. Martins-Neto, and M. Aparecida Vulcano. 1989. The earliest known fossil ant (first southern hemisphere Mesozoic record) (Hymenoptera; Formicidae: Myrmeciinae. Psyche 96:195-208 here.

4. What did the first ants eat?

Most likely the first adult worker ants ate what wasps and adult worker ants eat these days, which is liquids. The presence of the thin “waist” makes it impossible for adult ants to eat solid foods. However, they would not have eaten nectar, at least at first, because flowering plants arose a bit later.

The workers were likely predators that captured arthropods to feed to their larvae. The larvae may have given liquid food back to the adults once they had processed it. The adults might also have taken fluids from the prey.

5. Is there an ant species that are extinct?

Yes, many of the species found in amber (question 2) are extinct, as far as we know.

6. How and when were ants created?

Oh boy, that’s a tough question. When? The oldest fossils right now are from early to mid-Cretaceous, about 130 million years ago. How? Probably genetic modification from wasps already present. There are definitely people working on these sorts of questions. I’m not sure that what we know about the earliest ants is hard and fast yet.

I hope this helps, and that the answer arrives in time to help with your project.

Resources:

Carlos Roberto F. Brandão, Rafael G. Martins-Neto, and M. Aparecida Vulcano. 1989. The earliest known fossil ant (first southern hemisphere Mesozoic record) (Hymenoptera; Formicidae: Myrmeciinae. Psyche 96:195-208. Can download here.

Michael S. Engel and David A. Grimaldi. (2005). Primitive New Ants in Cretaceous Amber from Myanmar, New Jersey, and Canada (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). American Museum Novitates Number 3485 :1-24.

Holldobler, B. and E. O. Wilson. 1990. The Ants. The Belnap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. Excerpt.

Ted R. Schultz. (2000). In search of ant ancestors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 97(26): 14028-14029. (full text online)

New Ant Species Discovered In The Amazon Likely Represents Oldest Living Lineage Of Ants. Science News. 2008.

Lori Lach, Catherine Parr, and Kirsti Abbott, eds. 2010. Ant Ecology. Oxford University Press, USA, particularly chapters 1 and 2.

Will Queens Accept Cocoons From Other Colonies?

Roberta — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 15:08:19 +0000

Today we have a question for the Consult-Ant:

My little sister has recently found me (clever girl!) 4 ant queens from various places around my garden . Being so little she can spot them a lot more easily ha ha! I have recently (cheekly) ‘robbed’ coccoons for them from a neigbouring/non-family nest and put them in with two of my ant queens. Will they hatch and fight the queens or will they adopt them?

Thanks,

Johnny C

Johnny,

Adding cocoons from nearby colonies is a great way to get a colony going quickly, but only if the cocoons are from the same species or a closely-related one. Bert Hölldobler and E.O. Wilson talk about this on page 203 of their book The Ants.

Because the workers emerge in the new nest, they will accept the nest and the queen as their own. But once the queen starts to produce her own new workers, problems may arise. It seems that worker ants from another species apparently can recognize the newly emerged ants as different, and may attack and kill them.

The only other thing I would caution you about is being careful not to introduce parasites, mites or diseases from other colonies with the cocoons.
-The Consult-Ant

Ants Fighting

Roberta — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:28:29 +0000

Dear Ant Consult-Ant

I have an ant question!

Subject: Ant activity

In mid May at about 6:00 in the evening in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, I was walking along the sidewalk and saw some small black ants swarming. I like to watch queens come out so I sat down to watch. I stayed about 45 minutes and I didn’t see a single wing. What I did see was amazing. The ants were small black ants. After a few minutes the ants started forming patterns. Two ants that were narrower than most would lock jaws. Then two normal ants would grab onto the heads of these two to form a plus sign or X. They would stay like that for 6-7 minutes then breakup. Sometimes 4 more of the normal ants would grab onto the abdomens of the 4 ants and form a plus sign of eight ants. In the time I was there there were always 15 to 30 of these symbols. I am not sure how many separate nests were participating. I left to get a camera and a collecting jar. When I came back the show was over. Is this common behavior? I have not seen it before. What was going on?

Dear Dave,

Clusters of ants acting in an excited manner do often indicate swarming. As you noticed, however, you would expect to see winged queens and males mingled among the workers. Instead, from what you describe, it sounds like you witnessed a a fight between two nearby colonies of ants.

When ants fight each other, they tend to latch onto antennae and legs and pull hard, thus creating the X’s you describe.

Above three ants from one colony pull on a single ant from another colony.

More ants join in, and it becomes a tug of war.

Sometimes one species of ant attacks another, such as these weaver ants attacking a much smaller species.

(Photo from Wikimedia) This one looks more like a Y than a X.

They may use the same behavior with prey.

(Photo from Wikimedia)

Ants may fight other ants to gain access to food, to defend their nest from hostile take over, or to defend the area around their nest (territory).

Some ants are more likely to fight than others. In Mark Moffett’s Book Adventures Among Ants, he has a chapter devoted to the territorial disputes between two huge colonies of Argentine ants in California. Along the front line literally millions of ants die every month in what is a never-ending struggle.

On the other hand, a dispute between honeypot ants may be resolved by mere posturing, no actual fighting may occur.

Sounds like you witnessed an interesting event, which left an impression on you. Without knowing the species involved, etc., I hesitate to speculate further as what was happening.

Thank you for sharing this question. Let me know if you make any more interesting observations.

-The Consult-Ant

Question 13. Replacing Queen Ants

Roberta — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:33:58 +0000

13) If a colony with only one queen ant were to die, would she be replaced with another? Or does the colony die out. If she gets replaced, then are there always alates available to replace her at any time? Or are they only produced prior for the mating season, nuptial flight, and etc.? Is there any way of the colony knowing that the queen is about to expire, like some kind of special pheromone?

Mike, you’ve taken us on quite an adventure with your questions. It’s been a fun learning experience for me to dig up the answers for the ones I didn’t know about. If you have any more questions, or you’d like clarification about anything, feel free to ask.

As for the ability of ant colonies to replace their queens, this is a topic that comes up often.

For many temperate ant species with a single queen, the answer is that once the queen dies, the colony is a goner. The worker ants will not accept one of their sisters as a new queen, workers can not become a new queen themselves, nor can they raise a new queen like honey bees do. Some worker ants can produce eggs once the queen has died, but those eggs are unfertilized and will become males.

That said, there are a number of ant species that don’t fit the norm. In species like the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, colonies have many queens, and the males and queens mate right inside the nest. Having many queens allows the colonies to become large quickly. In fact, one problem with Argentine ants is that when they are introduced to places they have never been before, they form such large colonies that they can quickly overwhelm or drive out many native ants, even ants much bigger than themselves. Argentine ants proved to be hugely successful at spreading and are now found almost worldwide.

Another strategy is found in the ponerines that don’t have a distinct, physically different queen. In those species, the egg-laying individual is called a gamergate. When one gamergate dies, the next high-ranking worker takes over laying eggs. Hoelldobler and Wilson discuss this in detail in their book, Superorganism.

Most ants colonies have distinct periods or seasons when the reproductives are produced, but that will vary from species to species and even somewhat from year to year, due to differences in environmental triggers, amount of food, age of the queen, etc.

Finally, the queen probably won’t give off a specific signal that she is weak (it wouldn’t be to her benefit), but there might be a decrease in the pheromone(s) she produces to attract the workers and keep them from producing eggs.

By the way, you might be interested to know that researchers recently synthesized the pheromone of the queen black garden ant and were able to show that it does suppress the ovaries and egg-laying ability of worker ants. See: University of Copenhagen (2010, July 14). Elusive ant queen pheromone tracked down. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 24, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2010/06/100630101016.htm

For more information on ant queens, see a previous post answering questions about ant queen development.

If anyone has more information about this they’d like to share, please let us know.

Do ants drink water?

Roberta — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:39:59 +0000

Mike wrote to the “Consult-Ant” with a number of questions about ants. I am going to try to answer each one in a separate post. For the original list of questions and links to all answers, visit here.

11) Are there some ant species that simply drink water and then other species that absorb it from the humidity of the air? Or do they all do both?

Your question reminded me of the movie Microcosmos, which contains some great footage of ants and other insects dealing with water. I’ll throw the trailer below.

The second thing I thought of was communal peeing as a flood defense, where ants drink water and then run outside to “pee,” removing excess water from their nests. You know you want to click the link and see it, so go ahead. I’ll wait for you to come back.

Ants need water. Many drink water from drops and small puddles.

Ants drinking honey

Ants can obtain moisture from a variety of sources, including food. Leafcutter ants and weaver ants obtain moisture from plant sap. Many ants tend aphids and other insects of the order Homoptera for liquid honeydew, which is full of water. Other ants visit extrafloral nectaries on plants for a source of sweet liquid.

Ants have also been shown to use “tools” to help them collect larger amounts of water and sweet liquids than they could carry in their crops. Harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex) have been known to toss sand into liquid food and then carry it back to their nest. Aphaenogaster ants use bits of plant material as sponges to soak up liquids and transport it.

Mark Moffett found Diacamma ants decorate their nests with feathers, which collect dew in the early morning. (I have seen Forelius ants carrying feathers here in Arizona.) He also suggests that the dead ants spread around the nest might also serve for dew collection.

As far as “absorbing humidity,” Coenen-staß (1986) suggested that the red wood ant, Formica polyctena, might be able to absorb water vapor based on sorption rates. Other scientists have investigated desiccation resistance, and suggest that, for example, some ants can reclaim their internal water through structures called “rectal pads”(Hood and Tschinkel, 1990).

Videos showing ants drinking water:

Microcosmos trailer. For a review, see my Growing With Science blog.

The bottom line is that worker ants do drink water, and give it to other members of the colony. As for humidity absorption, that is relatively unknown.

For more information:

Coenen-staß, D. (1986). Investigations on the water balance in the red wood ant, Formica polyctena (Hymenoptera, formicidae): Workers, their larvae and pupae. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Physiology. 83 (1): 141-147.

Hood, G. and W.R. Tschinkel. (1990). Desiccation resistance in arboreal and terrestrial ants. Physiological Entomology, 15 (1): 23-35.

Moffett, M.W. 2010. Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Can a worker ant become a queen?

Roberta — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:53:03 +0000

I have an ant question!

I have an ant farm with Little Black ants but not a queen. can one of the ants become a queen?

Thanx
Zarah

Zarah,

I’m afraid once an ant becomes an adult ant, it can no longer change form or shape. It can’t shed its skin or grow.

Adult worker black ants can not become queens, and the worker ants can not lay eggs that will become queens either.

There are a few types of ants where special workers become “queens,” but those ants are much more like wasps, and you wouldn’t want to keep them in a regular ant farm. If you’d like a more detailed explanation, check the ant queen development post.

How are your little black ants doing? I hope they are doing well.

Can ant larvae get too cold or hot?

Roberta — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:39:08 +0000

10) If the eggs, larvae, and pupae were placed in bad conditions, specifically temperature, for a short period of time, would they be harmed?

As you might expect, the optimal temperature for rearing larvae depends on the ant species. In his 1988 paper, Porter found that fire ant larvae (Solenopsis invicta) grew and developed between 24° C and 36° C, with optimal growth at 32 °C. Abril et al. found a range of 18°C to 32°C for larvae of the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, with optimal development closer to 26°C. Argentine ant larvae held at temperatures above 32°C did not survive.

Of course if the temperatures are hot enough to burn or cold enough to freeze, then the larvae would be harmed even with brief exposures. But what about temperatures that are not extremely hot or cold, but just outside of the range for normal development? Once again, depending on the species, there could be critical windows of development that can be missed if the larvae aren’t reared at proper temperatures. Exposure to low temperatures could potentially stimulate larvae to enter diapause, as well.

Adult worker ants are much less susceptible to changes in temperature. Types of desert worker ants may survive soil surface temperatures of 60 to even 70° C! (Marsh 1985)

In an actual nest, the nurse workers move the larvae from chamber to chamber to ensure the larvae are exposed to the correct temperatures.

Let me know if you have more specific questions.

References:

Abril S, Oliveras J, Gómez C. 2010. Effect of temperature on the development and survival of the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile. Journal of Insect Science 10:97 available online: insectscience.org/10.97

Marsh, A.C. (1985). Thermal Responses and Temperature Tolerance in a Diurnal Desert Ant, Ocymyrmex barbiger. Physiological Zoology, Vol. 58, No. 6 (Nov. – Dec., 1985), pp. 629-636.

Porter SD. 1988. Impact of temperature on colony growth and developmental rates of the ant, Solenopsis invicta. Journal of Insect Physiology, 34(12): 1127-1133.

Can Ants Digest Chitin?

Roberta — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 01:49:13 +0000

9) Ants(obviously) eat other insects, and I probably lack observation skills but do the ants also eat the exoskeleton also? Do they (or the larvae) have some way of digesting chitin? I did see that the ants pretty much leave MOST of the exoskeleton intact, and go for soft parts.

You have definitely got some challenging questions here. I’m going to give this one a try, but if anyone knows more about this, please jump in.

You probably have seen bug bits (discarded exoskeletons) littering the trash heaps around ant nests.

Many arthropods, including insects, have long chain polysaccharides in their cuticle known as chitin. (Chitin is also found in fungi, which was one of the lines of evidence that moved fungi into their own Kingdom.) The exoskeleton of insects is also made up of various proteins and waxes.

Chitin is known to be difficult to digest. It’s long chain polysaccharide structure is similar to cellulose, which is also difficult for animals to use as food. The digestion of chitin requires special enzymes, chitinases, to break the strong bonds between the molecules. For a time it was thought that chitinases only occurred in a few bacteria, but evidence is showing up that certain animals have chitinases in their digestive systems, too.

It turns out that insects have chitinases able to break down chitin, but they aren’t where you might expect them. The chitinases in insects are in the cuticle and are used to move chitin during molting.

We know that adult worker ants can’t digest solids, so they can’t digest chitin. What about larvae? It is highly unlikely, because the larval digestive system is also lined with chitin. When insects molt, they also shed most of their digestive tract, which is derived from the same tissues as the exoskeleton. Therefore, it seems larval ants probably couldn’t digest chitin without digesting their own alimentary canal.

Many arthropod predators of insects suck out the insects fluid insides. Think about spiders, assassin bugs, lacewing larvae, etc. They are all feeding on fluids.

If it is true that insects can’t digest chitin as a food source, this leads to some other questions. Leafcutter ants feed on special fungi, which they grow in their nests. Do the fungi they grow have chitin? Do the leafcutters have gut symbionts or some other means to digest that chitin?

If there are any chitin experts out there, it would be great to have some clarification.