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[5] [6] A queen can live up to 30 years, and many colonies survive for 20 years. [ 4 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ] A colony inhabits a nest that is up to 5 metres (16 ft) deep. [ 9 ] The queen stays at the bottom of the nest, and workers usually relocate themselves and brood within the nest, capturing safe levels of heat.
While no known land animal can live permanently at a temperature over 50 °C, Sahara Desert ants can sustain a body temperature above 50 °C (122 °F), [2] with surface temperatures of up to 70 °C (158 °F). Despite this, if out in the open, they must keep moving or else they will fry.
Fire ants sting and bite, particularly little kids since they can come into contact with dirt mounds playing outside. During those rare summer showers, fire ants will immediately turn up.
Plerergates can live anywhere in the nest, but in the wild, they are found deep underground, unable to move, swollen to the size of grapes. [7] In Camponotus inflatus in Australia, repletes formed 49% (516 ants) of a colony of 1063 ants, and 46% (1835 ants) of a colony of 4019 ants. The smaller colony contained six wingless queens.
They seek food, and mark their path as they return to the mound to alert the worker ants. The worker ants follow the scent trail and collect the food. Other worker ants clean, extend, and generally tend to the mound, the queen, and the brood. All the ants in the colonies are females apart from the winged males produced in the breeding season.
Cataglyphis [2] is a genus of ant, desert ants, in the subfamily Formicinae.Its most famous species is C. bicolor, the Sahara Desert ant, which runs on hot sand to find insects that died of heat exhaustion, and can, like other several other Cataglyphis species, sustain body temperatures up to 50°C. [3]
Some major ants can grow 16mm long, which is pretty big for an ant! Mutualism Between Ants and Fungi Leafcutter ants build massive nests that can reach 20 feet deep.
The fungus needs the ants to stay alive, and the larvae need the fungus to stay alive, so mutualism is obligatory. The fungi used by the higher attine ants no longer produce spores. These ants fully domesticated their fungal partner 15 million years ago, a process that took 30 million years to complete. [13]