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Ants have colonised almost every landmass on Earth. The only places lacking indigenous ants are Antarctica and a few remote or inhospitable islands. Ants thrive in moist tropical ecosystems and may exceed the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals. Their success in so many environments has been attributed to their social organisation and ...
Ants (family Formicidae in the order Hymenoptera) are the most species-rich of all social insects, with more than 12,000 described species and many others awaiting description. [1] Formicidae is divided into 21 subfamilies , of which 17 are extant and four subfamilies are extinct , described from fossils .
Ants have colonised almost every landmass on Earth. Their population is estimated as between 10 16 –10 17 (10-100 quadrillion). [29] With an estimated 20 quadrillion ants their biomass comes to 12 megatons of dry carbon, which is more than all wild birds and non-human mammals combined. [30] [31] [32]
This is a list of ants of Great Britain, including endemic and introduced species.Compared with much of the rest of Europe, Great Britain has a smaller number of ants.The size and diversity of ant species in any area is largely determined by the highest summer soil temperature, and this being so, it is not surprising that the greatest concentration of different species is centred in the warmer ...
Nature is a wildlife television series produced by Thirteen/WNET New York. It has been distributed to United States public television stations by the PBS television service since its debut on October 10, 1982. Some episodes may appear in syndication on many PBS member stations around the United States and Canada, and on the Discovery Channel.
The colony was estimated to contain 306 million worker ants and one million queen ants living in 45,000 nests interconnected by underground passages over an area of 2.7 km 2 (670 acres). [14] In 2000, an enormous supercolony of Argentine ants was found in Southern Europe (report published in 2002). [ 15 ]
Being the largest ants on Earth, army ants, such as African Dorylus queens have the greatest reproductive potential among insects, with an egg-laying capacity of several million per month. Army ant queens never have to leave the protection of the colony, where they mate with foreign incoming males which disperse on nuptial flights .
Carpenter ants (Camponotus spp.) are large ants (workers 7 to 13 mm or 1 ⁄ 4 to 1 ⁄ 2 in) indigenous to many forested parts of the world. [ 4 ] They build nests inside wood, consisting of galleries chewed out with their mandibles or jaws, preferably in dead, damp wood.