Dear AntAsk,

I am a fourth grader, and I am doing a science project. I am required to ask an ant expert questions about my science project. Can you please answer the following questions? When you are testing ants, do they run for survival? What happens when you try to grab ants?

Thank you,
Monica

Dear Monica,

Thank you very much for your great question! Ants can react in two different ways when you try to grab them: Either they try to escape or they try to attack you. Some ants (all belonging to one particular subfamily, the Formicinae) spray formic acid, some other ants sting (for example bullet ants or Acacia ants) for defense. I find that ants usually try to escape unless you are working directly at their nest site. Once you try to grab them at their nest, they want to defend the nest and will even sacrifice their lives.
I hope this answers your question!

All the best,
Steffi Kautz and the AntAsk Team

Hello,

I'm doing a biology project about evolution and I was wondering if ants, specifically the common carpenter or fire ant, has any vestigial features, and what may have been their function.

Thanks!
Haley

Hi Haley,

This sounds like a very interesting biology project! Vestigial traits are reduced or incompletely developed structures. These features are non-adaptive and have no function, but are clearly similar to functioning organs or structures in closely related species. Vestigial traits are homologous among related species and are evidence for common descent and a shared evolutionary history. In ants, vestigial traits have not been extensively studied and there are just a few examples. Remains of wings in the worker cast, called "gemma" have been described in some ant species: in pupae of the ponerine Diacamma ceylonenese (Baratte et al. 2005), in larvae of the red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta (Bowsher et al. 2007), and in Pheidole morrisi (Sheibat et al. 2010). Vestigial spermatheca are present in some basal ant lineages (Gobin et al. 2008). These vestigial traits are particularly interesting as the queen caste still possesses functional wings and functional spermatheca, but the workers do not. Workers cannot fly and mate. Some ant lineages are sting-less, but possess vestigial traits of the sting apparatus, for example the entire Formicinae subfamily. This subfamily includes the genus Camponotus (carpenter ants). Other vestigial traits are the absence of functional eyes in army ant species (see photo of Eciton burchellii below). These ants are blind, but show remains of the eyes.

Here are the relevant citations:

Baratte S, Cobb M, Deutsch J and Peeters C. 2005. Morphological variations in the pre-imaginal development of the ponerine ant Diacamma ceylonense. Acta Zoologica 86: 25-31.

Bowsher JH, Wray GA, Abouheif E. 2007. Growth and patterning are evolutionarily dissociated in the vestigial wing discs of workers of the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta. Journal of Experimental Zoology (Mol. Dev. Evol.) 308B:769-776.

Gobin B, Fuminori I, Billen J, Peeters C. 2008. Degeneration of sperm reservoir and the loss of mating ability in worker ants. Naturwissenschaften 95:1041-1048.

Shbailat S J, Khila A, and Abouheif E. 2010. Correlations between spatiotemporal changes in gene expression and apoptosis underlie wing polyphenism in the ant Pheidole morrisi. Evolution and Development 12: 580-591.

I hope this helps!
Steffi Kautz & the AntAsk Team

Hey,

I was just wondering if you knew what type of ants these critters are? I live in Florida if that helps.

K. Brown

*****

Hello,

These appear to be ghost ants (Tapinoma melanocephalum), a notorious so-called "tramp" species that is well-established in Florida. The species epithet melanocephalum literally means "brown head", owing to its distinctive bicoloration. Here is a previous post that addresses the role of ghost ants as pests in the home and also provides links to a number of articles that can tell you more about the appearance and ecology of this species.

Thanks,

Alexandra Westrich & the AntAsk Team

My 3 year old daughter found this insect on her bicycle
from Santa in Chile. I have contacted some local entomologists but this
specimen may be introduced. so, a more experienced entomologist may be
needed. My wife found your website and since you work with such a high
number of species, you may have a better understanding of what this
specimen may be or where to look.

It looks and behaves as an ant, but its head (rostrum) is quite
different as you will see. Any idea?
Gian

Dear Gian,

The insect that your daughter found looks a lot like an ant, but as you noticed, its head and mouthparts give it away as another type of insect mimicking an ant. All ants have mandibles that they can use for chewing in one way or another but this insect appears to have piercing mouthparts and is likely a member of a hemipteran group that look a lot like ants. We have several posts on ant mimics here, here, here, and here that you might find interesting.

Thanks for your question,
Ben Rubin & the AntAsk Team

Dear AntAsk,

I'm in Central Texas in Limestone County and photographed some ants that were behaving like leafcutter ants. But I have never seen ants with such huge spikes on their backs! Will you please tell me exactly what kind of ant these are?

Thanks!

Pamela

*****

Hey Pamela,

You're right! The ants in your photographs are indeed leafcutter ants. This particular species is Atta texana. All species of leafcutter (or fungus-farming) ants display a spiny exterior, as you point out, and in fact the number of these thoracic spines tells you the difference between the two "true" genera of leafcutters, Atta and Acromyrmex. Please see this previous post to learn more about the geographic distribution of leafcutter ants, and the second point of this post for an explanation of their spiny morphology.

Thanks for your interest!

Alexandra Westrich & the AntAsk Team

About a week ago at location Kandy, Sri Lanka round 7 in the evening local time (a little after sunset) I was observer of a fantastic scenery with some rather large insect. They were attracted by the light in the room, and in very short time, there were hundreds flying round the lamps. Suddenly over few minutes, they landed, dropped their four wings and mated, where after the male died and the female disappeared - I didn´t see where, as I was occupied taking photos.
The length of the insect was round 10 mm, and the wingspans round 30-40 mm. A local told me that this happened at few times a year. Somehow it's was like when ants are mating in my country, but I do not find the animals very ant like.

I add a few pictures showing the experience. I'm great full for any informations regarding these insects.

Allan Bergmann Jensen

----

Dear Allan,

Thanks for your detailed descriptions and great photography work concerning the termite queens that were mating in your kitchen! You were right, there are some very distinct differences between the termites in your kitchen and the ants you may have seen mating previously in your life.

If you'd like to know more about the differences between ants and termites, here is a good blog previously written on how to distinguish them.

As you can see in your pictures, the insects in question have broad waists, a pair of forewings and hindwings of roughly equal size (and almost double the body size), and beadlike antennae. This makes them termites!

Good luck on your future identification!

-Max Winston & the AntAsk team

Dear AntAsk,

I am doing a hands on report/experiment on ants for 6th grade. I will need to test my theories and answer questions. My Hypothesis is, ants will only eat sweets. My investigative question is, are ants picky about their food? My mom and I have read info from www.live-ants.com. We found info of types of ants and foods they eat. I am supposed to mention who discovered this? Further investigation led me to Dr. Brian Fisher. He was identified as discovering the 12,000. different species. Can you help me to answer who discovered what ants eat, when, where, and how did they make this discovery or point out a resource I may be missing. Not able to search to get my answers. Also is there a specific ant farm I can purchase to test my hypothesis?
Thank You so much for your help.
Stephanie

Dear Stephanie,
Thanks so much for your question! Like you saw, there are many species of ants. In fact, if you include the species that haven't been described yet, the number may even be closer to 24-28,000! It would take a long time to watch all of those different ants, so for the majority of ants, we don't have any clue of what they eat.

For many of the ants that live around our houses, observations of their preferences are so easy that very few people have published in-depth studies of their diets. Asking who was the first to observe an ant eating something sweet is sort of like asking who was the first to observe rabbits eating vegetables. Even if I did find out who the first person was to write about rabbits eating vegetables, I would be reluctant to give them credit for "discovering" that! Also, as you found out, there are many, many species of ants, more than the number of species of birds! Ants live in many different places and eat many different things. According to evolutionary biologists, the last common ancestor of all ants may have actually been back in the age of the dinosaurs, aroud the same time modern birds may have started to diversity (give or take 50 million years), and perhaps before the origin of modern mammals (there are more than twice as many ant species as mammal species!) so asking who discovered what ants eat is a little like asking who discovered what birds or mammals eat. Without being more specific, you're going to have a hard time!

That being said, several researchers have been doing very interesting research on specific diet preferences of ants. In another blog post we put up today, Dr. Mike Kaspari explains why some ants might be more attracted to salt than to sweet bait (read more here). In some older studies, Dr. James Brown (no relation to the funk/rock singer) showed how important competition was between ants and rodents for seeds in desert communities in the American Southwest (overview of his experiments here and here). Dr Corrie Moreau and Jacob Russell and their colleagues discovered how important it might be for certain kinds of bacteria to live inside of certain ants, so that the ants can get all the nitrogen they need just from the bacteria turning nitrogen in the air into food the ants can use (read more here)! Other authors have researched what the best ratio of food is to feed to ants. For example, Dussutour and Simpson published the recipe for a diet that they claimed made their ants the happiest (click here for link).

Those four studies show how the environment might change what ants need to eat (Kaspari), how ants might change the environment for other animals by competing with them for food (brown), how ants and bacteria can work together to make food for each other (Russell and Moreau), and what the basic nutrients ants might need are (Dussutour and Simpson). The important thing to remember about ants and the food they want to eat is that just like us, they need carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and lots of vitamins and minerals. Ants definitely need salt, for example, and calcium. Some ants usually get by with mostly sugary water they drink from different parts of plants, but most of those ants will also eat fatty, protein-rich foods like peanut butter and dead insects. It all depends on what nutrients they need most at the moment. Some ants are strict predators, and will pretty much ignore anything that doesn't move. Leaf-cutter ants actually chew the leaves they cut into something like paper mache, and use that material to grow fungus garden (They are the worlds first gardeners--they discovered agriculture millions of years before we did!).

If you give us some more information about where you live, we might be able to help you out with diets of specific ants you might be able to find around your house. Many of the best Ant Farm ants are the "Seed Harvester" ants, in the genera Pogonomyrmex, Messor, and Aphaenogaster. These ants will sip sugar, but they need to gather seeds as well, to feed to their larvae. In terms of ants that you might already have around your house, Structure-infesting Ants (or any of Stoy Hedges books) has a number of good notes on dietary preferences of ants that are commonly found in and around houses in North America. If you don't live in North America, let us know, and we might be able to point you towards some other general references.

So, to summarize, if you have a certain type of ant, you might be able to discover who best characterized the different foods that ant eat. You might want to check out some other blog posts here about specifics for ant foods here, here, here, here, and here. About specific ant farms, it might be easiest to just place some bait out in an open jar and try to catch some ants! If you know of some place that there are ants around, you could get a bunch of small jars. I've used baby-food jars before, but I'm sure anything would do as long as it has steep, smooth sides. Just put a bunch of them with different kinds of food out in a place where you know there are ants (for example, every 5 paces along a wall), and pick them up three or four hours later! Then you can see which kind of food got more ants. My favorite food to use is peanut butter, but other people think tuna fish works really well, or some kind of nutty, shortbread cookie. For sweets, you could use honey, jelly, or any kind of sugar-water solution.

Hope this helps!
best,
Jesse

ps., just for the record, Brian Fisher is an amazing guy, and he's described quite a few species of ants. However, he did not describe all of them. You can read more about people who have described some of the 11,000 or so ants Brian hasn't had time for here. In fact, I'm pretty sure Dr. Fisher himself has a number of heros in the ant world, including Dr. Barry Bolton. There are lots of great qualities that make Dr. Fisher special, even amidst the hundreds of talented myrmecologists (people who study ants), but personally one the things I'm most grateful for is his passion and persistence at pulling together this great website. Pretty much everyone who studies ants would have a much harder time doing our jobs without it!

Hi,
For my specialist study in the UK I am studying the food preference of Lasius niger by feeding them 3 cotton buds soaked in different solutions (sugar+water, salt+water, and just water). So far, I have found that they prefer the salt solution over the suger solution and I am wondering whether this is possible as Lasius niger are knwon to prefer sweet foods over others. I believe the food preference is seasonal and is related to colony needs (althought my colony does not have a queen).

Kind regards,
Christina
*****

Dear Christina,

Your ant feeding experiments sound interesting. We contacted an expert on the salt preference of ants, Dr. Michael Kaspari, to help us with this question. Here is what Mike had to say:

"Christina,
It is indeed possible. A diet rich in plant exudates like nectar is typically poor in sodium, the Na in NaCl, or table salt. We have found that ants that are more herbivorous are likely to take advantage of NaCl baits, especially if those baits are presented to ecosystems that are far from an ocean source of sodium. Check out KASPARI, M., YANOVIAK, S. & DUDLEY, R. 2008. On the biogeography of salt limitation: a study of ant communities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, 105: 17848-17851."

Mike also suggested Googling "ants" and "salt" to find other relevant resources.

Best of luck with your research!
Mike Kaspari (guest expert), Corrie Moreau & the AntAsk Team

Hi, my name is Felipe and I live in Brazil, I found some queens in the countryside and I wonder which species are them, can you guys help me out?
I found them living under a rock and they are red legged and their body is black. Some told me they are Camponotus, I knew that, but which camponotus species specifically?
Here are some pictures of them in a tube.
That's it, I hope you guys can help out..

Thank you
Felipe Lei
Mirmecolista e Estudante
São Paulo Brasil

Hello (Olá) Felipe!

It's great to see you become interested in raising ants. This is an excellent way to learm more about their home life. It is difficult to identify the ants to species from your pictures, though they do look like Camponotus.
There are many species of this genus in Brazil. Some do not have names yet, as the group needs work in that rich fauna. However, a number of them are pictured at AntWeb's Paraguay page - http://www.antweb.org/description.do?rank=genus&name=camponotus&project=paraguayants. You might be able to compare the color and hair patterns of your queens to the worker pictures there, and make a good guess about the species.

Até logo.
James C. Trager & the AntAsk Team

On my walks I see ants of many sizes. My question is about medium size fast moving ants. As they race about in a line (or roughly a broad line), some going and some coming, some meet head on and stop to either check something or communicate. They stop for a split second or sometimes a second or two. Any idea why?
John McAllister

Dear John:

As always around here, we appreciate your interest in ants. Lacking locality information or more specific description of the ants, it would be impossible to identify the species you observed, but some general principles of ant behavior will certainly apply to your question.
Ants may form relatively heavily traveled trails, with individuals traveling in both directions for a couple of reasons. One is that they have what is called a foraging "trunk" trail, with hungry outbound foragers heading away from the nest to the food gathering areas beyond, and food-bearing returning individuals heading home. Similar trails may be formed among the various nests of ants that live in large, multi-nest (polydomous) colonies, and it is along such trails that the family ties among the different nests are maintained.
You more or less answered your own question about why the ants stop when they meet head-on, with the phrase "either check something or communicate". One thing they check is that the ant they encounter is a member of their own colony, recognized by odor, just as dogs recognize humans and other dogs individually. Ants are strongly territorial and typically don't tolerate members of other colonies intruding on their space. Another thing, they might be checking is if the oncoming ant has any food to offer. Commonly, if a returning forager has found a particularly good source of food, it may communicate to the other ant through physical and chemical (pheromone) signals that it should carry on in the direction it is going to find that food.

James C. Trager & the AntAsk Team