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The queen is the reproductive member of the colony. Some ant species will only have one queen, while others will form polygynous colonies of multiple queens, such as Argentine ants Linepithema humile. [2] The workers are responsible for supporting the queen, maintenance, and foraging. Unlike queens and drones, workers are born wingless.
An ergatoid queen of the species Myrmecia esuriens. An ergatoid (from Greek ergat-, "worker" + -oid, "like") is a permanently wingless reproductive adult ant or termite. [1] [2] The similar but somewhat ambiguous term ergatogyne refers to any intermediate form between workers and standard gynes.
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.
A queen ant (formally known as a gyne) is an adult, reproducing female ant in an ant colony; she is usually the mother of all the other ants in that colony. Some female ants, such as the Cataglyphis , do not need to mate to produce offspring, reproducing through asexual parthenogenesis or cloning , and all of those offspring will be female. [ 1 ]
Ant colonies have a complex social structure. Ants’ jobs are determined and can be changed by age. As ants grow older their jobs move them farther from the queen, or center of the colony. Younger ants work within the nest protecting the queen and young. Sometimes, a queen is not present and is replaced by egg-laying workers.
Queen (marked) and workers of the Africanised honey bee, Apis mellifera scutellata. The gyne (/ ˈ ɡ aɪ n /, from Greek γυνή, "woman") is the primary reproductive female caste of social insects (especially ants, wasps, and bees of order Hymenoptera, as well as termites).
Worker policing is found in honey bees and other hymenopterans including some species of bumblebees, ants and wasps.. Worker policing is a behavior seen in colonies of social hymenopterans (ants, bees, and wasps) whereby worker females eat or remove eggs that have been laid by other workers rather than those laid by a queen.
The pavement ant is dark brown to blackish, and 2.5–4 millimeters (0.10–0.16 in) long. A colony is composed of workers, alates, and a queen. Workers do have a small stinger, which can cause mild discomfort in humans but is essentially harmless. Alates, or new queen ants and drones, have wings, and are at least twice as large as the workers ...