Nature Bulletin No. 518-A   February 23, 1974
Forest Preserve District of Cook County 
George W. Dunne, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:ANT SOCIETIES

That first small crater-like ring of soil granules heaped up around a 
crack in the sidewalk is a sign of spring. Hesitate there a moment -- 
children always do -- and you'll see several Little Black Ants hurrying 
in and out, bringing up particles of earth from below as they enlarge 
their underground home. At another time you may see columns of 
them in an ant safari with two-way traffic as they cross a lawn or 
invade a kitchen to forage for food.

All ants live in colonies. Ants are called social insects because within 
each colony there is a division of labor with males, females and one or 
more castes of workers each performing certain tasks for the benefit of 
the whole group. A single colony may vary in size from a few dozen 
individuals up to millions. Some naturalists suppose that ants are more 
numerous than any other type of land animal others think that plant 
lice outnumber them.

In most kinds of ants a new colony is started by a young queen. 
Immediately after the mating flight she loses her wings, then digs a 
hole in the ground or finds a cavity under a rock or beneath the bark of 
a tree. There she walls herself in and remains for weeks or months, a 
voluntary prisoner. During all this time she does not eat but is 
sustained by stored fat and the large wing muscles which are now 
useless. First, eggs are laid which hatch into larvae. The queen nurses 
these on saliva until they transform into pupae which look like small 
oblong capsules and are often mistakenly called "ant eggs ". From 
these emerge abnormally small, wingless workers called "minims". 
Commonly, the three stages -- egg, larva, and pupa -- each require 
about three weeks.

This first brood of workers digs out of the cell and begins to gather 
food for itself and its mother. Then she lays more eggs, and the 
workers take over the care of the new larvae which appear. Because 
they are abundantly fed, these produce workers of a larger caste. All 
workers are imperfect females which rarely lay eggs. Now the colony 
increases rapidly. New chambers and galleries are excavated. For the 
remainder of her life, which may reach 15 years, the queen is merely 
an egg-laying machine. In later years, males and females with wings 
suddenly appear outside the colony and launch into their nuptial flight. 
These young females start new colonies and the males die a day or two 
later. The queens come from larvae which have been specially fed, and 
the males come from unfertilized eggs.

Various ants eat almost any kind of plant or animal material. Cookie 
crumbs -- a combination of sugar, starch and grease -- seem irresistible 
to many of them. They are also great scavengers, stripping flesh from 
the bones of dead animals and drafting away dead insects. Some kinds 
are best known for their habit of keeping "ant cows" -- plant lice or 
aphids -- from which they coax a sweet fluid called honeydew.

The Army Ants of tropical America and Africa are famous for their 
predatory habits. No living thing along their line of march, even man, 
can resist their tearing jaws. The Leaf-cutting Ants feed on fungi 
which grow on chewed up foliage in their subterranean "mushroom 
gardens". Some of our local ants raid the colonies of other kinds, carry 
away their pupae, and make slaves of the workers that emerge from 
them.

Few things are more interesting in the schoolroom than a healthy 
colony of ants in an observation nest. Detailed information about that 
is given in Service Leaflet No. 35, which may be obtained from the 
MacMillian Science Co., Inc., 8200 South Hoyne Avenue, Chicago 20, 
Illinois.