Fascinating Ants

Among the many hundreds of thousands of astonishing organisms with which we must

share this earth, there is one seemingly ordinary group of specimens which

fascinates many people beyond all others. There is nothing too extraordinary in

the proportions or appearance of ants, but it is their history and culture that

induces a second look. These insects are about as different from us mammals as

two organisms can be, yet it appears that of all the known animals their way of

life appears closest to our human way of life. The similarities in the ways in

which we organize our lives are astounding. Ants are doubtlessly the most

successful of all the social insects of the Hymenoptera, an order also including

wasps and bees.

The earliest known specimens are found entombed in the Scandinavian Baltic Amber

samples which scientists date in upwards of 100 million years old (The Ant

Colony Œ89). These primitive samples have evolved into the 5000 to 10000

species known today which vary amongst themselves as widely as the numbers

suggest (Social Insects Œ68). These remarkably adaptive creatures are found in

some form on all continents and all habitats but the extreme arctics. Their

success is manifested in the claim that at any time there are at least 1

quadrillion living ants on earth(Groliers Œ93).

All species of ants are social. They live in organized communities or colonies,

which may contain anywhere from a few hundred to more than 20 million

individuals. These are organized into a complex system which may contain two or

more castes and sub castes which can be roughly organized into three groups.

Queens, males and workers.

The queen is much larger than the other ants, and has wings until mating. Her

primary task is to lay eggs for the colony. Some colonies have one queen;

others have up to 5000. Queens develop from fertilized ordinary eggs, nobody

is exactly certain what causes these to develop into queens but it is generally

thought that the process comes from an altered diet in the pupae and larvae

stages and as a pheremone response, which will later be discussed. Queens have

an extended life span of up to 25 years and can lay millions of eggs in that

time (Ant Colony Œ89).

Male ants are winged as well, their sole purpose is to mate with the queens.

For this reason they are the shortest lived ants in the colony. Hatching in the

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...ne species over another found in nature

aside from we humans is the slave-making species. These raid other colonies and

steal worker pupae that they enslave to carry out the work of their colonies.

Some species, such as the ants of the Amazon are so specialized for capturing

slaves that they can not forage for food or care for their young. Without

slaves they quickly perish.

Ants are often called the most fascinating insects of all. While they can be

vastly destructive, stripping valuable trees bare in the tropics, and a general

nuisance marching through kitchens and pantries they are extremely helpful to

man as they help to clear the earth of pests like termites. Wood ants clear

forests of millions of tree-destroying insects over a single summer. They have

been here for approximately 53 million years, and 56 percent of genera

represented among the extensive Baltic amber are living today, and show no sign

of dying out soon. In our great pursuit of knowledge it is my hope that we can

derive something of value from studying the culture and life-style of the

hardest working organisms in the world. (With the exception, of course, of the

Villanova biology teachers).