Message about ants summary. A short story about ants. Ants. The most interesting facts about these insects. Ant: description for children

Ants are one of the most highly organized insects on the planet. Their ability to cooperate and self-sacrifice for the good of the colony, high adaptability, activity resembling reasonable in complexity - all this has long attracted the attention of scientists. And today science knows numerous Interesting Facts about ants, some of which are known only to a narrow circle of specialists, and some of which refute established myths. For example…

Ants are the most numerous insects on Earth

According to the calculations of one of the world's most respected myrmecologists, Edward Wilson, there are from 1 to 10 quadrillion ants living on Earth today - that is, from 10 to the 15th power to 10 to the 16th power of individual ants.

Incredible, but true - for every living person there are about a million of these creatures, and their total mass is approximately equal to the total mass of all people.

On a note

Myrmecology is the science of ants. Accordingly, a myrmecologist is a scientist who is mainly engaged in the study of this group of insects. It was thanks to the works of such scientists that very interesting facts about ants became known, which expanded the ideas of science about these insects.

On the Pacific island of Christmas square meter The soil surface has about 2200 ants and 10 entrances to the nest. And, for example, in the savannas of West Africa, there are 2 billion ants and 740,000 nests for every square kilometer of area!

No other group of insects reaches such a population size and density.

Among ants there are the most dangerous insects in the world

Perhaps neither poisonous snakes, the inhabitants of equatorial Africa are not afraid of large predators or spiders as they are - a column of several million insects, whose soldiers are armed with powerful jaws, destroys almost all life in its path. Such trips are the key to the survival of the anthill.

More interesting facts: wandering ants- one of the most in general. Their soldier can reach a length of 3 cm, the uterus - 5 cm.

When the inhabitants of a village learn that such a colony is to pass through their settlement, they leave their homes, taking all their pets with them. If you forget a goat in a stall, the ants will bite it to death. But they also destroy all cockroaches, rats and mice in the villages.

But the bullet ant is considered the most dangerous ant in the world: 30 of its bites per 1 kg of body weight of the victim are fatal. The pain from their bite exceeds in strength that from the bites of any wasps, and is felt throughout the day.

Among the Indian tribes of South America, for the initiation of a boy into a man, a sleeve is put on the hand of the initiate with live ants placed in it. After the bites, the boy's hands are paralyzed and swollen for several days, sometimes shock occurs and the fingers turn black.

Ant eggs are not really eggs.

What are commonly referred to as ant eggs are actually developing ant larvae. Ant eggs themselves are very small and of no practical interest to humans.

But the larvae are willingly eaten in Africa and Asia - such a dish is rich in protein and fats. In addition, ant larvae are an ideal food for nestlings of various ornamental birds.

Ants are a famous delicacy

The most famous ant dish is wood ant sauce, which is used as a condiment in Southeast Asia.

Honey ants are very interesting in this regard. In each of their anthills, there are from several tens to several hundred ants used by the rest of the colony as food reservoirs. They are specially fattened during the rainy season, their abdomen is filled with a mixture of water and sugars and swells to such a size that the insect cannot move.

During the dry season, other individuals from the anthill lick the secretion constantly secreted by these living barrels and can do without external food sources. Such ants are actively harvested where they live - in Mexico and the southern United States - and eaten. They taste like honey.

Another interesting fact of a gastronomic nature: in Thailand and Myanmar, ant larvae are used as a delicacy and sold by weight in the markets. And in Mexico, large ant larvae are eaten in the same way as fish caviar in Russia.

Ants and termites are completely different insects.

Indeed, ants belong to the order Hymenoptera, and their closest relatives are wasps, bees, sawflies and riders.

Termites are a rather isolated group of insects close to cockroaches. Some scientists even include them in the order of cockroaches.

This is interesting

The complex social structure of a termite mound, reminiscent of that of an anthill, is just one example of convergence in the animal kingdom, the development of similar traits in members of different groups who find themselves in similar conditions.

It is noteworthy that a mammal lives in equatorial Africa - a naked mole rat, whose colonies also resemble ant colonies: only one female breeds in mole rats, and the rest of the individuals serve her, feed and expand their burrows.

The vast majority of ants are females.

All the worker ants and soldier ants in every nest are females, incapable of reproduction. They develop from fertilized eggs, while males develop from unfertilized ones.

An interesting fact about ants: whether a worker ant or a future uterus will grow out of an egg depends on how the larva feeds. The worker ants themselves can decide how to feed the brood and how many future queens to feed.

Some do not have a uterus as such, and all working females can breed. There are also species in the nests of which several queens live. A classic example of this is the nests of domestic ants (Pharaoh ants).

The queen ant can live up to 20 years

The usual lifespan of a queen who has managed to establish a colony is 5-6 years, but some live up to 12 or even 20 years! In the world of insects, this is a record: most single insects, even of a larger size, live on the strength of several months. Only in some cicadas and beetles, the full life span, taking into account the larval stage, can reach 6-7 years.

This interesting fact does not mean at all that all queens have such a life expectancy: most of the fertilized females die after the summer, and a significant part of the established colonies also die out for various reasons in the first year of their existence.

There are slave ants

The connections of different ants with each other are so diverse that even people can sometimes envy them.

For example, in a whole genus of Amazonian ants, worker ants do not know how to feed themselves and care for the nest. But they know how to attack the nests of other, smaller species of ants, and steal larvae from them. The ants that develop from these larvae will continue to care for other than their queens and soldiers.

In other species, this behavior has reached the point where the uterus simply penetrates into someone else's anthill, kills the queen living there, and worker ants recognize her as their own and take care of her and her offspring. The anthill itself is then doomed: only females capable of capturing the anthill of another species will develop from the eggs of such a female, and with the death of all the working ants, the colony will be empty.

There are also benign cases of slavery. For example, the queen steals several pupae to establish a colony, and the ants that develop from them help her in fact. initial stage colony development. Further, the colony develops by the descendants of the uterus itself.

Ants can learn

Interesting facts about ants related to the phenomenon of learning attract the close attention of many scientists.

For example, in some species of ants, those individuals who managed to find food teach others to find a place with food. Moreover, if, for example, in bees this information is transmitted in the process of a special dance, then the ant specifically teaches another to pass a particular route.

Video: ants build a living bridge with their bodies

Experiments also verified that during training, the teacher ant reaches the desired point four times slower than it would get to it on its own.

Ants know how to farm

This interesting feature Ants have been known for a long time - South Americans use the most complex food chain in the animal world:

• some members of the colony gnaw off a large piece of a leaf of a tree and bring it to the anthill

• smaller individuals, never leaving the colony, chew the leaves, mix them with excrement and parts of a special mycelium
• the resulting mass is formed in special areas of the anthill - real beds - where fungi develop on it, providing ants with protein food.

It is interesting in ants that they do not eat the fruiting bodies themselves - they feed on special growths of mycelium. Some members of the colony constantly bite off the emerging fruiting bodies, preventing the mycelium from wasting useful material on useless legs and hats.

This is interesting

When a fertilized young female leaves the nest, she carries away a tiny piece of mycelium in a special pocket on her head. It is this reserve that is the basis for the well-being of the future colony.

In addition to ants, only man and termites have learned to cultivate other living organisms for their own benefit.

Relationship between ants and aphids

The shepherd inclinations of ants are known to many: some anthills are so dependent on a flock of aphids that they also die when the latter die out. Scientists believe that the release of the secret at one time was a protective reaction of aphids from the attack of enemies, only the secret itself was sharply smelling and toxic.

But once natural selection suggested to pests that ants can not be scared away, but lured and forced to protect themselves. Thus, a unique example of a symbiosis of two completely different groups of insects arose: aphids share sweet, healthy and satisfying secretions with ants, and ants protect them.

Aphid secretions that attract ants are called honeydew. In addition to aphids, scale insects, mealybugs and some cicadas share it with ants.

Interestingly, many insects have learned to secrete an attractive secret for ants in order to penetrate their nests. Some beetles, caterpillars and butterflies feed on the stocks of the ants themselves in the anthill, while the ants do not touch them precisely because of their ability to share honeydew. Some of these guests in anthills banally devour ant larvae, and the ants themselves are ready to forgive their treachery for a drop of sweet secret.

The above are just some interesting facts about ants. In the biology of each species of these insects, you can find something unique and original.

It is thanks to this uniqueness and abundance of specific adaptive features that they managed to become one of the most numerous and advanced groups of arthropods in general.

Interesting video: the battle between two colonies of ants

Ants are one of the most numerous and well-known insects. They are extremely complex public organization, biology and behavior. There are 12,000 species of ants in the world. Along with their closest relatives, wasps, these insects are included in the Hymenoptera order, but at the same time they are so peculiar that they stand out in a separate superfamily.

The body of an ant is divided into three sections: a large head, a relatively small chest, and a voluminous abdomen.

The paws are relatively thin, but they are armed with tenacious claws. Distinctive feature of these insects is a thin interception between the chest and abdomen and various glands that secrete odorous substances (each species has its own), which to a certain extent replace the tongue of these insects. With the help of odorous marks, ants signal danger, distinguish their own from strangers, notify about the beginning of the breeding season, the availability of food, and even ... about the need to take out the trash. In odorous woodworm ants, the smell is so strong that a person can easily feel it, and these insects smell like geraniums. In addition, the glands can secrete formic acid or poison (some species have a small sting for this purpose). However, the main organ of defense in ants is the mandibles. They are quite large, sharp and capable of snapping at a phenomenal speed - 120-230 km/h! Therefore, the bite of even a tiny ant is very sensitive and can scare away a relatively large predator.

The brain of an ant in relation to body weight is one of the largest animals in the world, but the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe extraordinary mind of these creatures is greatly exaggerated. In fact, ants do not have high intelligence, since all their reactions are exclusively innate. But the complexity and diversity of these instincts have no analogues in nature and, indeed, amaze the imagination.

Like everyone else social insects, individuals of the same species in ants are divided into three castes: females that lay eggs (queens or queens), males and barren females (workers). Caste is genetically determined and cannot be changed under any circumstances. Queens are the largest in size, at the beginning of their life they are winged, but after the mating season they bite off their wings. Males are the smallest in the colony and are also winged. Worker ants are always wingless, they are larger than males, but much smaller than the queen. Only in the most primitive species do all worker ants look the same, but most often there are morphological varieties within this caste. This division is due to the "professional" specialization of worker ants. In general, the color of these insects is inconspicuous: black, red, brown. The smallest dacetin ants are no more than 1 mm long, while the largest species, giant dinoponera and giant camponotus, reach 3 cm!

Giant camponotus (Camponotus gigas).

Ants inhabit all continents, climatic zones and natural areas. You will not find them only in the polar regions and in the center of vast deserts. Ants are active in the tropics all year round, in the temperate zone they hibernate in a numb state. Almost everywhere the density of ant settlements is very high. Even in the temperate zone, several dozen species of these insects live on several square kilometers, totaling 10-20% of the biomass. In the tropics, the share of ants in the total biomass of living creatures can reach up to 30%, up to 2 billion ants can live there per 1 km2 of territory! Such success is explained by the complex organization of ant communities.

Tiny colonies of primitive ant species can fit their nest in a nutshell or an empty acorn.

All species of these insects are colonial. In the most primitive species, a colony can be as small as a few dozen worker ants, and the largest families can include up to 22 million individuals. Most species are sedentary; they create special nests for housing - anthills. Usually main part anthill is immersed in the soil, where it forms a branched system of passages, sometimes reaching a depth of 4 m. Here is the queen, eggs and larvae. The appearance of the outer part of the anthill can vary from a simple hole in the ground to a huge pile of twigs and needles.

Anthills of red forest ants (Formica rufa) are the largest in the world, their height can reach 2 m!

The nests of cave ants from Australia look unusual. They are located in the ground, and the ants surround the entrance to the nest with a rather high barrier of dry leaves and twigs.

Nest of cave ants (Polyrhachis macropa) surrounded by leaves of veinless acacia (Acacia aneura).

The so-called spiral ants build real labyrinths of dried clay around the entrance.

Nest of spiral ants.

But the most amazing ant nests are above the surface. Red-breasted carpenter ants behave like real bark beetles. They gnaw out passages in rotten wood and arrange their nests in the trunks of old trees.

Cellular nest of odorous carpenter ants (Lasius fuliginosus).

The odorous wood-boring ants related to them do not gnaw out passages, but build cardboard nests in hollows.

The nest of sharp-bellied ants can be confused with a tinder fungus.

Finally, sharp-bellied ants build real paper nests in the crowns, similar to wasp ones. The pinnacle of building art can be considered the dwellings of tailor ants or weaver ants. They create nests from the leaves of trees, and do this without tearing them off the branches. During the construction process, worker ants grab the edge of one leaf with their paws, and hold the edge of another with their mandibles, while their counterparts bring their own larvae to the edges of the leaves, secreting sticky threads.

Green weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) building a nest.

The arrangement of insect groups depends on the configuration of the leaves and does not change until the process of stitching the nest is completed.

And this is the result of the work of weaver ants. The basis of the nest was made up of live (green) leaves from several branches. Where there was not enough material, the ants skillfully patched up the holes with fallen (brown) leaves.

Some species of ants do not have permanent nests and wander all the time. But the movement of the column cannot last forever, insects are forced to periodically stop for reproduction. In this case, they create a temporary nest from their own bodies. A lot of ants are woven into openwork nets, from which a huge ball is formed. In its very center is the queen laying her eggs.

A giant living nest consisting of nomad ants, or Eciton Burchell (Eciton burchellii).

The relationships of ants in the family are extremely complex and diverse. Only in the most primitive species can the queen leave the nest and participate in foraging. In most cases, the uterus is engaged only in laying eggs, and all other types of work are performed by worker ants. But this does not mean that their caste is in an oppressed position. After all, it is the worker ants that often determine the fate of the queen: if she lays few eggs, she can be replaced with a more prolific queen, and the unwanted one is killed. In turn, the well-being of the queen depends on how plentifully she will be fed, and hence on the number of working individuals. If the worker ants die, the neglected queen, eggs, and larvae also die. Therefore, the young uterus primarily takes care of increasing the number of its “subjects”.

An ant-slave owner carries a larva. The jaws of these insects are adapted for capturing and holding prey.

The professional duties of worker ants are determined by the needs of the species. In all types of ants, young workers begin their “career” in the anthill with work as “nannies” and “nurses”: they transfer eggs and pupae from one chamber of the anthill to another, protect them from being stolen, and help the new generation to hatch. Their duties also include work on expanding the passages, cleaning the nest, removing the corpses of dead relatives. Over time, they begin to move farther and farther away from the nest and move on to collecting food. Interestingly, "career growth" directly depends on the success of the first trips. Individuals that bring little food remain “nannies” for the rest of their lives, and those who are especially lucky in search of food pass to the rank of foragers very quickly.

The profession of a forager is the most common in the ant family, but not the only one. Since worker ants are attacked by predators and sometimes by their own brethren, many species have worker soldiers to protect them. They are larger than ordinary individuals and are armed with powerful mandibles. The behavior of the soldiers is different: in wandering ants, they move at the head and along the edges of the column; at reaper ants they line up as an honor guard on the side of the path followed by foragers; in leaf-cutting ants, soldiers ride on bits of leaves carried by foragers and guard them from attack from above; in the European cork-headed ant, the soldiers have a bluntly cut head, with which they plug the passages in the anthill and let only individuals that have “their own” smell into it.

Eciton Burchell's worker-soldier is armed with huge mandibles.

Among the ant professions there are quite exotic ones. For example, Australian honey ants prepare food ... in the bodies of their own relatives! To do this, they have special workers that never leave the nest. They spend their whole lives clinging to the ceiling of the chamber with their paws, their main duty is to absorb food brought by foragers. From constant feeding, these ants swell incredibly and become huge, if such an individual accidentally breaks from the ceiling, its abdomen bursts and it dies. When the need for food arises, other members of the family come to these "living barrels" and beg for food from them. However, the ability to feed family members is characteristic of all species of ants, it is called trophallaxis. Thanks to it, a well-fed ant is able to quickly transfer part of the accumulated energy to hungry and weakening individuals, while the survival of the family as a whole increases.

"Live barrels" of Australian honey ants hang from the ceiling of an anthill.

The smell is the main marker that determines the behavior of an individual and the attitude of its fellows towards it. An ant from someone else's nest (even if it belongs to the same species) will not be allowed into the anthill. By smell, ants determine where and what kind of food was found: they follow the odorous marks left by the lucky one to the food source. That is why you can often see these insects moving in a chain one after another. A concerted effort allows the ants to carry prey and building materials many times their size. The wounded ant also begins to secrete special substances that literally call on his fellow ants to come to his aid. Dead ants release oleic acid, which induces workers to carry the corpse out of the nest. In addition to smell, antennal contacts can be used, in some species chirping and tapping with the abdomen. Thus the primitive instincts in different combinations form very complex behaviors.

Thanks to tenacious paws, ants move with equal ease along horizontal and vertical surfaces. Runner ants (phaeton ants) that live in the deserts of Africa run especially fast. Rapid running helps them to prepare food at noon, without burning themselves on hot ground. Wood ants can glide by changing direction of flight, some species are able to jump. Thanks to mutual assistance, ants are not afraid of even insurmountable obstacles for singles.

The ants formed a living bridge across the crevice between the stones. None of them could have covered such a distance on their own.

Fire ants form rafts of their own bodies during floods, and these floating swarms are able to navigate rivers.

On the surface of a living raft, white eggs and larvae are visible, which fire ants especially carefully protect from getting wet.

Among ants there are herbivorous, predatory and omnivorous species.

The European or steppe reaper ant (Messor structor) prepares food.

Herbivorous reaper ants, during the flowering of cereals in deserts and steppes, harvest seeds at an accelerated pace, the reserves of which are enough for them for the whole year. Carpenter ants eat dead wood and gum trees.

Leaf-cutting ants with the same diligence gnaw off pieces of leaves and carry them to the anthill. True, they do not eat the leaves themselves, but only chew and store this wet mass in underground chambers. There, in dampness and darkness, mushrooms begin to grow on this "silo", which the ants eat.

A worker ant-leaf cutter carries a piece of a cut leaf on which a soldier sits.

Omnivorous species collect the corpses of invertebrates, sweet secretions of aphids and other herbivorous insects.

The ant milks the hunchback, which gets rid of the annoying "shepherd" with a drop of sweet liquid.

Ants love these sugary secretions so much that they carefully protect aphids and take care of them in every possible way: they transfer them to healthy plants, hide them in an anthill for the night, graze and protect them from predators, such as ladybugs.

Camponotus ants and the accumulation of aphids they care for.

Predatory and, partially, omnivorous species attack living insects and their larvae. Nomadic ants living in South America are famous for their particular ruthlessness. These are large and very aggressive insects, fearlessly attacking all living things in their path. Their bites and abundance can put people to flight, and even such formidable animals as jaguars. If escape is impossible (for example, the animal is tied), then the ants, biting, bring it to a painful shock and death, and then eat the victim with common efforts. Not a single animal in the jungle tries to resist them, but immediately runs away when it sees a moving column.

The ants surrounded the egg of the Morpho Peleides butterfly (Morpho peleides) without waiting for the mother to fly away.

All types of ants breed at a strictly defined time 1-2 times a year. The simplest method of reproduction is the so-called budding. At the same time, a young queen is born in the mother colony, which moves with some of the workers to a separate anthill. But more often, ants make a mating season, during which young males and females rise into the sky. Here, individuals from different anthills mix with each other and form pairs. Young queens with one or more males sit on the ground and start building a nest. Shortly after fertilization, the males die, and the females lay eggs, from which workers will subsequently hatch. Until the working individuals begin to forage, the queen does not eat anything. This period can sometimes last up to a year, and wings help the female survive hunger. After the mating flight, she gnaws them off, and the remaining muscles dissolve in her body, released nutrients go to the formation of eggs and the maintenance of the life of the uterus.

Ant eggs form a sticky mass that makes them easier to carry by workers. Under the abdomen of an adult, legless larvae are visible - they differ from eggs in a dark head, weak segmentation and crumbled villi.

In all species of ants, females (workers or young queens) are born from fertilized eggs, and males from unfertilized ones. Thus, the composition of the family is self-regulating: the fewer males, the higher the probability of their birth. A surprising exception is the small fire ant, in which everything happens exactly the opposite. From unfertilized eggs, only female queens are born from him, from fertilized - working individuals. In some eggs, paternal genes lead to the destruction of maternal chromosomes, and then males are born from them. Thus, females of this species always inherit only maternal genes, and males only paternal genes, that is, both sexes reproduce essentially independently of each other by cloning.

Despite their tiny size, ants live a very long time: working individuals - 1-3 years, and queens - up to 20 years! And only the age of males usually does not exceed a few weeks.

A worker ant watches the queen, exhausted from her nuptial flight.

Ants have many natural enemies. Adults are eaten by various birds, toads, frogs, lizards, shrews, predatory wasps, and spiders. In search of eggs and pupae, anthills are ruined by wild boars and bears. Anteaters, aardvarks, Moloch lizards, ant lions feed exclusively on these insects. When attacking an anthill, instinct prompts the ants not to hide, but to attack the enemy together. Thus, the colony survives at the expense of the death of individual individuals. In cylindrical camponotus, the instinct of self-sacrifice is so developed that in the event of an attack, they literally make themselves hara-kiri. A sticky liquid pours out of the ripped abdomen, gluing the enemy together.

Ants provide an invaluable service to various forest flowers. It is difficult for these plants to spread their seeds as they are small and there is no wind in the forest. Therefore, in the blueberry, violet, maryannik, hoof, celandine, kandyk, the seeds have a tiny juicy appendage that attracts ants. Having plucked the seed, the ant drags it into the nest and feasts on the juicy appendage, while the seed itself is thrown away. Thus, these insects annually spread billions of seeds throughout the forest. In the tropics, some plants attract ants to protect their leaves from being eaten by other insects. To do this, they provide their guardians with free housing. For example, African acacias have hollow thorns, and myrmecodia have thick tubers with many passages and cavities. In these ready-made anthills, their guards settle.

Tuberous myrmecodia (Myrmecodia tuberosa) on a tree branch. On the section of the tuber, cavities and passages for ants are visible.

People use ants in a variety of ways. In Mexico and Thailand, large, nutritious eggs of some species are harvested and used in cooking as a substitute for caviar. Large ants are fried, and prehensile weaver ants are used to suture field conditions. To do this, the ant is brought to the edges of the wound and allowed to grab onto the skin, after which the body is torn off, and the head is left. The mandibles of the ant act like a stapler, firmly sewing the edges together for several days until the wound is completely scarred. IN middle lane Ants are sometimes attracted to protect forests and gardens, but keep in mind that the habit of these insects to breed aphids can be harmful. In the tropics, leaf-cutting ants cause great harm to fruit plantations. Aggressive fire ants are extremely dangerous. When they bite, they release poison into the body of the victim. Although not fatal, it causes severe pain, similar to a burn, and in some cases a dangerous allergic reaction.

The benefits of ants far exceed the harm they can cause, so these insects have long been loved by people. They are a model of diligence and mutual assistance. At the same time, a number of endemic species are threatened with extinction. Now 146 species of ants are included in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Ants are insects that cannot live alone, but live in colonies of up to a million inhabitants. They are very self-organized. They belong to the order Hymenoptera. Promote soil fertility. Many plants grow faster near anthills. They protect plants from pests. At the same time, the ant insect itself serves as food for many species of birds and animals. In our world there are more than 14,000 various kinds ants. An ant can lift 20 times its own weight!

Family: Ants

Class: Insects

Order: Hymenoptera

Type: Arthropod

Kingdom: Animals

Domain: Eukaryotes

Ant Anatomy

The whole body of an ant is divided into three parts, like any insect - the head, chest and abdomen, as well as 6 paws. Ants can be divided into three types: males, females and workers. Males and females have wings, while workers do not. There are some types of ants where all ants have wings, including workers. Workers do all the dirty work in the colony - getting food, building nests, caring for eggs, protecting from enemies, and so on.

The size of ants depends on their species. The smallest species of ants start at 1 mm in size, while the largest species can reach up to 30-50 mm in length. They see well at a distance of 3-4 centimeters. The colors are also varied and depend on the type of insect - yellow, red, brown, black and even green and bluish. With the help of antennae, they interact with the environment. The jaw is a tool in performance various work. Some types of ants have a sting that allows you to defend yourself from enemies.

The insect ant has compound eyes, which consist of numerous lenses, but the vision is rather weak, and some underground species are generally blind. In addition to the compound eyes, the ant has three simple eyes. At the end of each paw, the ant has hooked claws that help them climb. vertical surfaces no problem.

Where does the ant live?

Ants are distributed throughout the world, except for the mainland Antarctica. They live in huge families in anthills that can build in the soil, under stones, in wood. There are species of ants that live in other people's anthills instead of building their own nests. There are species of ants that can keep slaves in the form of ants of other species, using their labor for their own benefit.

What does an ant eat?

The main food of an insect ant is plant sap, a sweet liquid that is secreted by aphids, as well as small insects. Some species of ants eat plant seeds and fungi.

Ant lifestyle

Ants are evolutionarily advanced insects. This is due to the fact that they live in huge social groups, where there is a clear division of labor, communication skills are developed, and individuals are able to coordinate their actions. Some species of ants have a developed language capable of conveying complex information. Ants protect themselves with formic acid, which they are able to produce, as well as strong mandibles.

Each family of ants consists of males, several reproductive females (they are called queens or queens), and a large number of workers, consisting of sterile females (females with an underdeveloped reproductive system). The uterus differs from all other ants in more large size and the structure of the chest, as well as the presence of wings, which she bites off herself after fertilization.

At the same time, the family has a clear division of labor and relationships between individuals, which makes the ant society similar to the human one. At first glance, it may seem that the ants have the main uterus, but in fact, the guiding force is the workers, who can destroy females for low fertility, destroy excess larvae, or change their diet.

Ant breeding

Mating in ants begins with a nuptial flight. Males take off first and spray pheromones. Due to which the females take off after them. Mating occurs on the fly or on the ground. After some time, the males die, and the females choose a place for the nest.

Ants have several stages of development: an egg, a larva that emerges from the egg, a pupa and an adult (an adult insect). The sex of an insect depends on whether the egg is fertilized or not. From fertilized eggs, females are born, and if the egg is not fertilized, then males. The uterus (reproductive female) is responsible for the reproduction of ants. She only mates once in her life. At the same time, she spends the sperm received from the male throughout the entire time. She then proceeds to lay eggs. The eggs hatch into larvae. The larvae are inactive, they are fed by workers.

Ant eggs

Male ants emerge from unfertilized eggs. Most often they have wings. Their role is to fertilize young winged females. Some time after their fertilization, the males die.

Ant larvae

The nutrition of the larva determines who the future ant will become - the uterus (queen) or the labor force. In this way, ants control the number of fertile females and infertile females. The ant larva goes through four stages of molting, then stops feeding, excretes the contents of the intestine and turns into a chrysalis. In some ant species, the larva can weave a cocoon before pupation. When the pupal stage is over, other ants help to free themselves from the cocoon, since the ant itself is not able to free itself from the cocoon. For the first days of their lives, workers help the queen care for the eggs, and then move on to other work.

Ant chrysalis

At different types Ants have differences in reproduction. In most species, the female mates once in her life, but there are species where the female can mate several times in her life. In some species of ants, workers are able to lay eggs, and some species are even capable of cloning. The life expectancy of the queen can reach up to 20 years, and the life expectancy of the worker up to 3 years.

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Small, industrious insects - red forest ants - built an anthill in the forest more often. This is their home". The ant heap is built of twigs and dry grass, this is the upper part of the house, and under it in the soil there are underground floors of the anthill with many passages. The anthill usually has a domed shape, which protects it from rain, water rolls down from the top and does not wash out the dwelling. The height of the anthill sometimes reaches up to 1 meter. The nest maintains constant humidity. Nesting material circulates all the time: ants lift up, needles and twigs. Therefore, in the nest, there is never mold.

Thousands of ants live in a large nest. Insects, there is a distribution of labor: some are responsible for the construction of housing and forage, others produce offspring, and so on. It is interesting to watch how ants scurry around the anthill all day long. Some are building material, others are prey for food (caterpillars, slugs)

How Ants Reproduce

On warm autumn days, especially after rain, flocks of ants - males and queens - fly in the air. Males live only a few days. Females lose their wings after flight and lay eggs in the warm season. The laying female lives for several years. Working females not only feed the larvae, but also clean them, transferring them from the top of the anthill to the bottom (depending on the weather) and back. Worker ants feed each other.

How wood ants hibernate

For the winter, forest red ants climb into the very depths of the anthill, where the temperature does not drop as much as on the surface. There, having gathered in a tight lump, they become numb until spring. In the spring, when the snow melts and the earth warms up, the anthill comes to life again. After hibernation, ants show great activity for the extermination of insect pests.

Reveal the connection between ants and the forest

It is estimated that a family of one anthill destroys from 10-80 thousand insects per day, of which 80 percent are pests. It is believed that ants from four medium-sized anthills are able to protect a hectare of forest from pests. To protect the forest, where there are no ants, they are moved there artificially. Some people sometimes stir anthills with sticks, disrupting the normal life of ants, which die from this. Thus, the forest is deprived of reliable defenders. Ants cannot be disturbed.

Ants are very beneficial insects: protecting anthills, we save our forests.

Okorokov Anatoly

It is unlikely that there will be a person who at least once did not stop near the anthill, fascinated by such a distant and at the same time inexplicably close world of these amazing insects. I decided to learn everything about ants and set a goal: to study the structural features of ants to study the structure of the nest to study professions to study nutritional features to study how ants communicate

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MOU - Mayskaya secondary school

named after Evgeny Leonidovich Chistyakov

All about ants

Leader: Illarionova

Larisa Ivanovna, teacher

primary school

1. Introduction

2. Features of the structure of ants

3. Nest structure

4 Professions of ants

5. Feeding ants

6. Communication of ants

7. Conclusion.

Introduction

Ants are one of the most common insects on our Earth. They are found in all natural areas, often living close to home.

In nature, ants cannot be confused with other insects: wingless, very active, always looking for something, fussing. You rarely see a single ant, even far from its nest, usually there are always a lot of them.

The community of ants, scientists consider as a kind of "superorganism", in which no part can live without all the others. An ant planted in a jar quickly dies, even if it has everything for a comfortable existence. He is only a particle torn from the whole, and is now doomed to death.

There are about 12,000 species of ants on Earth.

Rationale for the chosen topic

It is unlikely that there will be a person who at least once did not stop near the anthill, fascinated by such a distant and at the same time inexplicably close world of these amazing insects.

I decided to learn everything about ants and set a goal:

1. study the structural features of ants
2. study the structure of the nest
3. learn professions
4. study nutritional habits
5. study how ants communicate

To achieve the goal, I identified the following task:

1. Read the literature on this issue

Features of the structure of ants.

Ants belong to the phylum Arthropoda, to the class Insects, order Hymenoptera, family Ants. The body is articulated and consists of a head, thorax, and abdomen.

Ants have large heads. On the head are a pair of antennae and a pair of compound eyes. Simple eyes, or eyes, are most often three points on the crown of the head. Complex compound eyes are located on the sides of the head. The number of facets is not the same, in some species there are about a dozen of them, in others, with good vision, there are more than a thousand. The antennae are the sense organs. They serve the ant for the perception of olfactory, tactile and partly taste sensations. The main organ of taste is located in the ant's mouth.

The mouth of an ant is not adapted to absorb solid food, but is adapted only to the absorption of nutrient solutions. In addition to the upper and lower lips, there are two pairs of jaws. The upper pair are mandibles, without which ants have no life. Ants use them both as warriors, and as nannies, and as builders, and as foragers. IN lower lip the most important part is the tongue - the organ of taste and cleansing of the body, as well as the main tool for feeding juveniles and mutual nutrition of adult inhabitants of the anthill.

On the chest are three pairs of jointed limbs. In males and in young females, the chest is much more developed than in workers, and carries four wings. The membranous wings of ant males and females are transparent. The wings of the front pair are noticeably larger - longer and wider than the rear ones.

The abdomen is segmented, the first or first two segments are less developed and form a stalk. The stalk, connecting the abdomen with the chest, makes the ant body very flexible. The abdomen, consisting of movably connected dorsal and abdominal half rings, is able to increase in volume. The thing is that in the abdomen there is a goiter - an organ that serves to store and transport food. In the abdomen are poisonous glands associated with a sting. The abdomen of males and females is noticeably larger; reproductive organs are located here. The body of ants on the outside has a cover consisting of chitin. Chitinous cover has great strength. It protects the ant from mechanical and chemical influences external environment. Ants' defenses include sharp mandibles, a poisonous liquid, and, in some species, a sting.

Nest structure

The nest of red forest ants consists of above-ground and underground parts. The above-ground part in coniferous forests is constructed from needles, in deciduous forests - from sticks and other small but durable plant particles. From above, the ants form a cover layer of the dome, which protects the anthill from getting wet during rains.

The dome, flooded with rain, retains its strength. Water, as a rule, does not penetrate deep into the nest. After rain, the whole structure acquires a new margin of safety in the sun, since the pieces of building material seem to be soldered together.

Inside the ant heap, the plant material is larger - the sticks can have a different size, some reach a length of 10cm with a thickness of 5mm. Here from these building materials a system of passages and chambers is being built in which juveniles are grown. The dome of the anthill is surrounded by an earthen rampart.

An anthill does not end in an anthill. It has thousands of passages underground. These passages can go to a depth of 1-2m and end in wide cavities. Some are used as a dumping ground, in others young people develop, and others serve as a wintering place for ants. The temperature in such cavities - wintering does not fall below +5 degrees in winter. And when frosts rage above, the ants are not afraid and not cold in their house.

Well-marked paths depart from large anthills, along which a stream of ants moves from the nest and to the nest. The feeding paths of red forest ants remain constant, as a result, each anthill has its own feeding area.

Ant Professions

The family is the main form of existence of social insects. Consists of reproductive (females, males) and functionally asexual individuals (workers).

Female queens are larger than worker ants and never leave the nest. Their main function is to lay eggs.

The first batch of juveniles turns only into winged males and females, which do not live long, only 2-3 weeks, in an anthill, and then fly out together, mate and establish new nests. After swarming, male ants die. Of all subsequent clutches, only working individuals appear in the anthill.

Worker ants are wingless, underdeveloped females that are incapable of reproduction. In worker ants, the head and chest are reddish-brown, the abdomen is blackish, shiny. Body length from 4 to 9 mm. It is the working ants that we see on the anthill in huge numbers.

There is a division of labor between worker ants.

The worker ants that have just appeared are nannies involved in caring for the larvae and feeding the queens.

Older worker ants perform a variety of tasks: butchering brought prey, removing garbage, and building a nest. Then they become foragers. Among foragers, some specialize in hunting, others in the extraction of sweet food, and others carry material for building a nest. The largest worker ants protect the anthill - these are soldiers.

In red wood ants, each forager begins its non-breeding activity on the periphery of the protected area. In the future, it gradually moves to individual search areas that are closer and closer to the nest, and ends this path on the dome, where the ant serves as an observer.

The family of our ordinary red forest ants, under favorable conditions, can exist for 90 - 100 years. During this time, the family is repeatedly replaced by females that live a maximum of 15 - 20 years (this is a record among invertebrates), and to an even greater extent - worker ants that live only 3 years.

Ant nutrition

Red wood ants use mainly protein food (other insects that are killed and brought to the anthill) and carbohydrate (sugar secretions of plants, flowing tree sap, and especially sugar-rich secretions of aphids). Ants feed most of the protein food to the larvae; they feed on carbohydrates themselves. Ants are characterized by the exchange of food - tropholaxis. Trofollaxis allows both the nanny and the digger not to break away from their useful activities in search of food - others will take care of it.

Workers - foragers of red forest ants, whose task is to obtain food, during the summer bring 3,000,000 - 8,000,000 various insects to the nest, about 20 buckets of sweet juices, mainly aphid secretions, and 40,000 - 60,000 seeds various plants which are also eaten.

On summer days, the mass of insects brought into the anthill can reach 1 kg.

It is estimated that the ants of an average anthill protect 0.25 hectares of forest from harmful insects, and a large one - up to 1 - 4 hectares.

Ants prey primarily on those insects that breed in mass quantities in the forest. Mass insects are harmful insects - caterpillars of butterflies, caterpillars of sawflies, which eat leaves and needles.

Ant communication

When communicating with each other, ants use a variety of signals, mainly by touching each other with their antennae, legs, and head. Chemical signals are also used.

Looking for the way to the nest, red wood ants use the "language of smells".

With the help of smell, ants distinguish their cohabitants in the nest from "strangers".

It has been noticed that in various cases, ants touch, feel, hit each other with their antennae in different ways and accordingly change their behavior. They seem to be explained by peculiar gestures.

The famous Soviet entomologist Pavel Ustinovich Marikovsky noticed more than two dozen signals in ants: “Alien smell!”, “Who are you?”, “Attention!”, “Give me something to eat!”, “Beware!” and others.

When using chemical signals, ants adopt a defensive posture: they rise high on their hind legs and point the end of the abdomen forward. And immediately a pungent smell is felt: this is an ant that has splashed out a liquid consisting of formic acid and an alarm substance - undecane.

On the roads along which they run from anthill to anthill, ants secrete other, so-called trace substances, which allow them to stay on the road.

All ants from the same nest have a common smell that allows them to recognize each other and prevent ants from other people's nests from entering their own.

Conclusion:

In the course of my work, I came to the conclusion:

1. Anthills are an integral part of the forest community.

2. Anthills are a family, a community, a community (this is, of course, a semblance of a human life structure).

3. Ants living in anthills are eternal builders, brave warriors. These are insects that actively rebuild the world around them.

4. The significance of ants and anthills in nature is great and diverse.

5. Predation of ants - has a positive effect on the forest, as ants, eating various insects, protect the forest from possible pests.

Protecting anthills, we protect our forests!