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Myrmecophilous (ant-loving) caterpillars of the butterfly family Lycaenidae (e.g., blues, coppers, or hairstreaks) are herded by the ants, led to feeding areas in the daytime, and brought inside the ants' nest at night. The caterpillars have a gland which secretes honeydew when the ants massage them.
Swarming serves multiple purposes, including the facilitation of mating by attracting females to approach the swarm, a phenomenon known as lek mating. Such cloud-like swarms often form in early evening when the sun is getting low, at the tip of a bush, on a hilltop, over a pool of water, or even sometimes above a person.
The use of the term "agriculture", which may not be entirely appropriate for mutualistic relationships—particularly in cases where a colony is hosted by a plant, such as a tree, in exchange for protection and aid in its survival and growth—is well documented in the scientific literature for processes where ants create crops and directly cultivate plants or fungi.
The overall result is that when one ant finds a good (i.e., short) path from the colony to a food source, other ants are more likely to follow that path, and positive feedback eventually leads to many ants following a single path. The idea of the ant colony algorithm is to mimic this behavior with "simulated ants" walking around the graph ...
Colonies of real army ants always have only one queen, while some other ant species can have several queens. The queen is dichthadiigyne (a blind ant with large gaster) but may sometimes possess vestigial eyes. [5] The queens of army ants are unique in that they do not have wings, have an enlarged gaster size and an extended cylindrical abdomen ...
Leafcutter ants live only in South America, Mexico, Central America, and a few select areas of the Southern United States, including Texas.. There are at least 55 distinct species of leaf cutter ...
Weaver ants or green ants are eusocial insects of the Hymenoptera family Formicidae belonging to the tribe Oecophyllini. Weaver ants live in trees (they are obligately arboreal ) and are known for their unique nest building behaviour where workers construct nests by weaving together leaves using larval silk . [ 3 ]
Tapinoma sessile is a species of small ant that goes by the common names odorous house ant, sugar ant, stink ant, and coconut ant. [1] Their colonies are polydomous (consisting of multiple nests) and polygynous (containing multiple reproducing queens).