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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 ...
The reproductive P. barbatus caste is responsible for the formation of new colonies. A single queen ant establishes every colony. Large numbers of winged male ants and virgin queen ants fly to mating aggregation sites following midsummer monsoon rains. To found a successful colony, P. barbatus queens must mate with males from two separate ...
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.
The reasons that can lead ant colonies to clash are varied and depend on the species, locations, and contexts. For a number of them, such as leafcutter ants Atta laevigata, wood ants of the genus Formica, certain species of the genus Carebara, or giant ants Dinomyrmex gigas, it is a matter of territory covered and thus the available food for the different colonies.
An ant colony is a population of ants, typically from a single species, capable of maintaining their complete lifecycle. Ant colonies are eusocial, communal, and efficiently organized and are very much like those found in other social Hymenoptera, though the various groups of these developed sociality independently through convergent evolution. [1]
Colonies of army ants are large compared to the colonies of other Formicidae. Colonies can have over 15 million workers and can transport 3000 prey (items) per hour during the raid period. [14] [20] When army ants forage, the trails that are formed can be over 20 m (66 ft) wide and over 100 m (330 ft) long. [20]
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.
Weaver ants collaborating to pull nest leaves together. Weaver ant colonies are founded by one or more mated females . [17] A queen lays her first clutch of eggs on a leaf and protects and feeds the larvae until they develop into mature workers. The workers then construct leaf nests and help rear new brood laid by the queen.