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An ant colony is a population of ants, typically from a single species, capable of maintaining their complete lifecycle. Ant colonies are eusocial, communal, and efficiently organized and are very much like those found in other social Hymenoptera, though the various groups of these developed sociality independently through convergent evolution. [1]
In ants, social conflicts, sex conflicts, or caste conflicts can exist. These conflicts occur within the same colony or supercolony at various levels: on an individual scale, between two or more specific ants; on the scale of sex, between males and females; or on the scale of different castes, between queens and workers.
Most ant species will send individual scouts to find food sources and later recruit others from the colony to help; however, army ants dispatch a cooperative, leaderless group of foragers to detect and overwhelm the prey at once. [3] [5] Army ants do not have a permanent nest but instead form many bivouacs as they travel.
Any ant that enters a colony without a matching scent will be attacked. [150] Parasitic ant species enter the colonies of host ants and establish themselves as social parasites; species such as Strumigenys xenos are entirely parasitic and do not have workers, but instead, rely on the food gathered by their Strumigenys perplexa hosts.
D. laevigatus colonies are fairly small for army ant colonies, ranging from 30,000 to 1,000,000 individuals. Because the colonies prefer long-term food exploitation and stable column foraging systems to massive raids, there is little pressure for the colonies to expand and support the massive numbers of individuals common in surface-hunting ...
Fungus-growing ants (tribe Attini) comprise all the known fungus-growing ant species participating in ant–fungus mutualism. They are known for cutting grasses and leaves, carrying them to their colonies' nests, and using them to grow fungus on which they later feed. Their farming habits typically have large effects on their surrounding ecosystem.
Myrmecophytes, or ant plants, live in a mutualistic association with a colony of ants. These plants possess structural adaptations that provide ants with food and/or shelter. Myrmecodia are also classified as epiphytes. The term epiphytic derives from the Greek epi-(meaning 'upon') and phyton (meaning 'plant'). Epiphytic plants are sometimes ...
An ant supercolony is an exceptionally large ant colony, consisting of a high number of spatially separated but socially connected nests of a single ant species (meaning that the colony is polydomous), spread over a large area without territorial borders.