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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

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,
I was in Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica where I took this photo (sorry about the quality) of what I think is Camponotus sericeiventris. As you can see, the ant is walking over a sticky, black substance with no apparent problem. The whole trunk of the tree was covered in this substance - is it anything to do with the ants?

Many thanks
Alan

*****
Alan,

Thank you for contacting AntBlog and including an image. We contacted an expert on the ants of Costa Rica, Dr. John T. Longino, to address your question. Here is what Dr. Longino had to say:

"Your ant is indeed Camponotus sericeiventris. I've often seen tree trunks with black, sticky, oozy areas, and ants often seem to be attracted to them. I have always surmised that these are tree infections, a result of wounds and/or pathogens, and that the tree sap is oozing out and evaporating, making a sweet exudate that ants might like. I doubt that the ants are the cause of the exudate.

From the look of your image, the area looks wet but not super sticky. Ants have no problem walking over wet surfaces. Also, if a sticky surface gets a "skin" of moisture or dryness, that would make it easy for an insect to walk over. We might touch a surface and break that thin surface layer, contacting the sticky material below. So a surface that seems sticky to us might not be to an insect.

By the way, I did my graduate work in Corcovado, back in early 1980's, and developed my love of ants there."

John "Jack" Longino (guest expert), Corrie Moreau & the AntAsk Team

I heard of a study wherein ants were sprayed with a chemical that dead ants usually gave off and their nest-mates carried them off as if they were still dead even though they were still alive. Have you heard of this study and if so do you know where I can find it?

Thanks,
Jon

Hi Jon,

Thanks for your great question! The story is true. Researchers can capture the smell of a dead ant (or any insect) by dipping it in organic solvents (usually hexane) for a couple of minutes. The solvent can then be applied to another object or individual. The ants perceive this experimentally treated object or individual as dead and dispose it to the colony's dump sites. This behavior makes a lot of sense, because a dead and rotting individual would present a threat to the colony as disease could spread easily.

There are some great studies on this behavior (called necrophoresis):

Blum MS (1970) The Chemical Basis of Insect Sociality. In: Beroza M, editor. Chemicals Controlling Insect Behavior. New York: Academic; pp. 61-94.

Choe DW, Millar JG, Rust MK (2009) Chemical signals associated with life inhibit necrophoresis in Argentine ants. PNAS 106:8251-8255.

Gordon DH (1983) Dependence of necrophoric response to oleic acid on social context in the ant, Pogonomyrmex badius. J Chem Ecol. 9:105-111.

Haskins CP, Haskins EF (1974) Notes on necrophoric behavior in the archaic ant Myrmecia vindex (Formicidae: Myrmeciinae) Psyche 81:258-267.

Howard DF, Tschinkel WR (1976) Aspects of necrophoric behavior in the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta. Behaviour 56:157-180.

Visscher PK (1983) The honey bee way of death: Necrophoric behaviour in Apis mellifera colonies. Anim Behav. 31:1070-1076.

Wilson EO, Durlach NI, Roth LM (1958) Chemical releasers of necrophoric behavior in ants. Psyche 65:108-114.

All the best,
Steffi Kautz & the AntAsk Team

I took pictures of 2 Guardian Ants working Woolly Aphids. I am trying to find the name of the ant species that is acting as guardian to this mass of Woolly Aphids, Prociphilus tessellatus, on a growing Alder shrub next to a lake.

The area this Speckled Alder is growing in is very sparse during the winter with snow and ice licking at its branches. Where would these ants keep these aphids over the winter? Do aphids, and ants have sort of anti-freeze in there system that kicks in during the winter?

Since this was on a lake shore, and at the end of a wooded hill to the lake, do I need to be concerned relative to my plants about 500 feet away? If so what do you suggest?

Thank you,
Richard and Meghan
**********

Dear Richard and Meghan,

Thank you for contacting AntBlog and send such nice photographs. This certainly helps with identifications. Since you are in New England, we reached out to an expert in the area, Stefan Cover, for help. Here is what he said:

"Those ants are Camponotus noveboracensis. The Camponotus are frequent aphid tenders but we know nothing about the relationship between these ants and that particular aphid. No need to worry about plants 500 feet away, though."

In addition, if you would like to read more about what ants do in the winter, please see our previous post here.

Best regards,
Stefan Cover (guest expert), Corrie Moreau & the AntAsk Team

Dear AntAsk team,

I've been rearing a colony of North American Odontomachus for about three years now. Recently I separated about 200 workers from the main colony for the purposes of another project which has since been completed. Reluctant to return them to the original colony for fear of contamination, I have been keeping these workers separate and supplying them with sandy soil, some dried wood, a cotton ball of water, a cotton ball of sugar water and biweekly termites or pinhead crickets. However, I was startled to find that over three months later I still have about 85 or so of the separated workers left perfectly alive and well. I was wondering, what is the average longevity of most Odontomachus workers? Is this common for them to live this long?

Thanks for your help,
Kaitlin
*******

Dear Kaitlin,

Thank you for contacting AntBlog. Your experiments with Odontomachus trap-jaw ants sound interesting. To address your question, we contacted an expert, Andrew Suarez, who has lots of experience rearing Odontomachus colonies in the lab. Here is what Andy had to say:

"We have maintained a number of Odontomachus species in the lab, and have found workers to be quite long lived under lab conditions. For a few of the larger species, we have had workers live for over a year. Six months, however, is definitely not unusual."

Good luck with your trap-jaw ant colonies!
Andrew Suarez (guest expert), Corrie Moreau & the AntAsk Team

Hi Antweb,

I am a PhD student in Synthetic Biology and I've read that you talked about artificial insemination trials in ants, which have not be very successful. Would you mind giving me the references of the papers talking about that?

Best,
Xavier

Hi Xavier,

Thanks for your question! As you have read in this post on "How to breed ants", artificial insemination in ants has not been very successful and only been tested on very few species. Cupp et al. (1973) conducted an experiment in which the authors decapitated males. Queens were anesthetized with CO2, and stroked against the males to induce ejaculation. This experiment was done using fire ants (Solenopsis invicta). Read here to find out more about the red imported fire ant.

In a study by Bell et al. (1983) instrumental insemination was conducted, also using the fire ant Solenopsis invicta. Virgin queens were induced to fly, anesthetized with CO2 and inseminated with either a mixture of sperm extracted from the male seminal vesicles and accessory gland contents or sperm alone. Of the females we artificially inseminated 65% produced workers. Artificial insemination techniques have also been carried out using Atta leaf-cutter ants (den Boer et al. 2010).

A recent review article on the copulation biology of ants has been published by Boris Baer (2011) in the journal Myrmecological News. Here is a link to the pdf. In this paper, some more references to studies conducting artificial insemination in honey bees and bumble bees are given.

All the best,
Steffi Kautz & the AntAsk Team

References

Ball DE, Mirenda JT, Sorensen AA & Vinson SB (1983) Instrumental insemination of the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata 33: 195-202.

Baer, B (2011) The copulation biology of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Myrmecological News 14: 55-68.

Cupp EW, O'Neal J, Kearney G, Markin GP, (1973) Forced copulation of imported fire ant reproductives. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 66:743-745.

den Boer SPA, Baer B, Boomsma JJ (2010) Seminal fluid mediates ejaculate competition in social insects. Science 327: 1506-1509.

Hi,

We live in the northeast corner of Vermont - close to the 45th parallel. My husband was logging dead trees just inside the woods. He cut down a two-part cottonwood that was large. It was like two cottonwoods had grown together or one had been cut long ago and shoots grew up onto the old tree. But where the V of this tree was, there was soil and that is where the ants lived. When the tree fell, the ants began moving the pupae into the forest floor. Right down under the earth. I did the best I could with the photos and have collected them into a Flickr set. Could you please ID them, if possible? The photos were taken on July 9, 2011.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/meeyauw/sets/72157627234873339/

Thank you very much for any help,
Andree
Barton, VT

Hi Andree,

Thanks for your question. We have deferred to James Trager, an ant expert with a lot of experience in ant identifications and a expert naturalist in general. Here is what he had to say:

"Almost certainly Lasius umbratus. This speices is not arboreal, but lives in soil, logs, stumps, or dead hollows of trees. It lines its nest chambers with a mix of wood pulp and a characteristic black fungus, visible in the pictures. They cultivate large numbers of pale reddish tan aphids on roots, probably including those of the tree in which they lived. In winter, the aphids are gathered up and pass the cold period in a large chamber together with the ants, then in spring are dispersed out among the roots to feed. The aphids provide lots of honey dew and some meat."

So, you not only found ants, but an entire little ecosystem when cutting the wood. Very interesting!

All the best,
James Trager (guest expert), Steffi Kautz & the AntAsk Team

I have a Lasius niger queen and she is mated, have had her for around 2 months now and she has laid several times, but each time the lava go black and never hatch. I think this is because they are not being fed. I have put some small dead bugs in the tank with her but she doesn't leave her little tunnel to ever get to them so I am constantly removing them and adding new ones in hope she will get them to sustain the brood. If I were to collect some ants from my garden (making sure they were also Lasius niger) and put them in with her would they kill her because they were from a different colony?

Please advise.

Best regards,
Tom

Hi Tom,

My suggestion is to interfere as little as possible. It is normal that queens do not take up any food during the initial founding phase. They use the energy from the decomposition of wing muscle tissue to feed the first round of larvae and these will always turn into small workers. Sometimes they lay so-called trophic eggs, which serve to feed the larvae. However, it is quite likely that a queen does not have the strength to make it through the initial founding phase of a colony. For this reason, colonies produce thousands of queen. This increases the likelihood that one will eventually make it. And this would be my advice: try to get several queens and hopefully one or a few will make it.

You are right that workers from different colonies will most likely kill the queen.

Hope this helps!
Steffi Kautz & the AntAsk Team