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Fire ant queens may live up to seven years and can produce up to 1,600 eggs per day, and colonies will have as many as 250,000 workers. [12] [18] The estimated potential life span is around 5 years and 10 months to 6 years and 9 months. [19] Young, virgin fire ant queens have wings (as do male fire ants), but they often cut them off after mating.
Not all ants follow the basic pattern described above. In army ants only males are alates, having wings. They fly out from their parent colony in search of other colonies where wingless virgin queens wait for them. A colony with an old queen and one or more mated young queens then divides, each successful queen taking a share of the 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 ]
One of the most common ways to get rid of the ants is to put oil or grease in the middle of the ant trap. However, this is a hit-or-miss method, because too little grease will not attract the ants, and too much will limit the effectiveness of the trap. The ants also appear to be resistant to most insecticides.
Solenopsis geminata is native to Central and South America, including the Caribbean islands, but has since spread throughout the tropics by human means. It is an invasive species with a world-wide distribution even greater than that of other invasive fire ant species such as Solenopsis invicta (red imported fire ant).
Due to the queen's large reproductive potential, a colony of army ants can be descended from a single queen. [10] When the queen ant dies, there is no replacement and army ants cannot rear emergency queens. Most of the time, if the queen dies, the colony will likely die too. Queen loss can occur due to accidents during emigrations, predator ...
Hu has been investigating fire ant rafts for years. These ants regularly assemble “ladders, chains, walls, and rafts, composed exclusively of individual ants linked together” to survive floods ...
Solenopsis saevissima, commonly known in Brazil as formiga de fogo, formiga-vermelha (red ant), or formiga-lava-pes, [1] is one of more than 185 species in the genus Solenopsis. [2] It, along with 13 other species, is also a member of the Solenopsis saevissima species group which are popularly known as fire ants. [3]