Queen Ant Facts
Watching an anthill for any length of time will reveal ants' industrious nature. Ants live in colonies, working together to ensure their collective survival. At the center of these colonies are special members--egg-laying females known as queen ants. Queen ants provide their colony with new members, ensuring the survival of the colony and their species as a whole.
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Ants' Social Structure
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Ants live in a cooperative structure called a colony. Ants are social insects, and their structure is called a colony. Within the colony, a caste system exists among its three types of residents: female workers, mating males and the queen, technically referred to as gynes (pronounced "jines"). Each group is vital to the overall survival of the colony. The workers provide food and protection. The queens lay eggs for a continuous supply of new workers, and the males fertilize the eggs. The queen is the most important member of the colony.
Queen Ant Physiology
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Queen ants' bodies are different from worker ants'. Ant queens are built for egg laying. Queen ants are the largest ants of the colony. Their abdomens are wider and specialized for egg production. The queens' large abdomens allow them to have wings, which take them on their reproductive flights or to a new spot to start a new colony. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have recently noted that in the early life stages, ants that later became queens were provided better diets than members who became workers. This better diet likely allowed their bodies to grow stronger and larger. Queens shed their wings after establishing their new nest, but their now-unneeded flight muscles provide them with nourishment until their offspring are mature enough to begin bringing them food.
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Multiple Queens
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Most ant colonies have multiple queens. Most colonies of ants have more than one queen supplying the group with many new workers. Nests with multiple queens are referred to as polygynous. Those with only one are called monogynous.
Life Cycle
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Worker ants bring food to their queen to nourish her egg laying. In some species, queen ants can live up to 15 years, although regardless of species, they are the longest living members of the colony. Queens can lay up to 800 eggs in one day. From egg to adult takes roughly 40 days on average; queens and males take about four days longer. Once adults, queens mate with the males, who then die. The queen may take flight to establish a new colony or begin laying her eggs in her current one.
Hostile Takeovers
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Workers support queen ants, but in turn, queens have to be productive too. Ants' interdependent social structure ensures their survival. Workers bring their queens food and water, and queens bring new workers into the world. New colonies need more queens in order to get a large supply of workers established. Eventually, however, a status quo is reached, and many queens laying eggs become a drain on the colony. Multiple queens also become less productive. The workers gang up on the queens, starving them or spitting toxic chemicals at them until they die. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen's Center for Social Evolution have discovered that the more productive queens are saved from these attacks because the workers are able to determine their fertility by smell. The threat of attack balances the queens' power over worker ants.
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References
- Photo Credit ant image by Marek Kosmal from Fotolia.com hormiguero image by Cristina Bedia from Fotolia.com ant on the edge image by Alexander Kosenkov from Fotolia.com Ant hills image by Jim Mills from Fotolia.com ant image by jeancliclac from Fotolia.com ants. image by mdb from Fotolia.com
