Ant. How an anthill works: the internal structure, life and interaction of ants Ants short message

Ants are small insects that, like wasps and bees, belong to the Hymenoptera family.

Ants are one of the most common insects on Earth. Most species can be found in the subtropics and tropics. The tropics have the densest population of ants. Ants form about one-third of the living biomass in the Amazon forests. As for Europe, about one hundred and eighty species of ants live here.

Ants are essential to nature. They secrete nutrients, eat insect pests and act as food for many birds and animals. There are approximately six thousand species of ants, most of which live in open nature. Only a few of them prefer to live near the buildings of people or in the houses themselves. Red brownie and black ants are most common in residential areas. They can often be found in urban apartments.

Appearance and features of life

Ants have a stepped head and a large rear part of the body. They have tentacles that consist of tips and a long element. Ants have a high level of social structure organization.

In the ant family, the queen ant lays eggs. Males are exclusively engaged in the fertilization of the queen and do not live long. Winged females appear briefly and, after mating, shed their wings and form new ant colonies. If you watch the anthill, then, as a rule, you can see only wingless workers, busy looking for food around the anthill.

Ants have the ability to communicate with the help of aromas - pheromones. The path to the source of food is marked by the smell of their legs, secreted by special glands and containing information about the quality and location of the source. An ant trail is formed along this trail and along it the ants carry food to the anthill. Liquid food is transported in the so-called. social stomachs. As for solid food, for example, larvae, it is transported to the anthill in whole or in parts.

Habitat and reproduction

Ants live in large colonies and families, which include males, females, the so-called. worker ants (usually sterile females) and ant larvae, pupae and eggs.

Ant eggs are small in size, larvae are worm-like and without legs and are placed deep in the nest and are not visible to people. Worker ants take care of them. They are also engaged in bringing food to the nest, and, as a rule, less than ten percent of all worker ants leave in search of it.

House red ants form families of thousands, if not more than a million individuals. In nests there are sometimes up to two hundred female queens. The growth per year can be from two to thirty thousand ants. The development time of one ant from an egg to an adult state in these ants is about forty days. The female ant lives for two hundred and seventy days, the male - only twenty days, the worker ant - sixty days.

In general, red ants are able to eat almost everything. But most of all they love products with sugar and animal protein. Most often, semi-liquid or liquid organic substances are eaten. By producing saliva with digestive juices in the mouth and pre-processing solid food, ants are then able to absorb it.

They can live only in sufficiently heated places. As for apartments, they prefer to settle in kitchens, dining rooms and bathrooms. For nests, inaccessible and hidden places are chosen - under the parquet floor, behind the tile, behind the plinth, in all kinds of cracks and crevices, etc. Spreading through the building, they penetrate into other rooms, using all kinds of communications (pipes, etc.) and cracks.

Ants are strong!

As you know, ants are able to carry loads that are several times their own weight in mass.

The secret here is that the muscle strength of the ant does not decrease in direct proportion to its size. We consider: with a decrease in the dimensions of the body of an insect, its mass decreases in proportion to the third power of the length of its body, and the transverse cross-sectional area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe muscles, which determines the absolute strength, decreases and corresponds to the square of the length of its body, which means, to a lesser extent than its mass. With the help of this fact, small ants can transport large loads on themselves.

However, following the same calculations, if an ant is theoretically enlarged to the size of an elephant, it will no longer be able to carry the same mass as it can carry, having a small size.

Danger to people

Crawling somewhere on rotting food remnants and sewage, and then, getting on food, ants are able to act as carriers of all kinds of human diseases: diphtheria, typhoid, etc. Any food can be affected by an invasion of ants.

The secret placement of nests and the inability to effectively use contact poisons to reduce their numbers seriously complicate the fight against these insects. Usually the most effective method is the bait method, which is based on the characteristics of a given biological species to transfer its food from the mouth of one individual to the mouth of others who are in the nest.

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 rational 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 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 mainly studies 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, there are about 2,200 ants per square meter of soil surface and 10 nest entrances. 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, nor large predators, nor spiders are afraid of the inhabitants of equatorial Africa 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 are one of the most common. 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 abducts several pupae to establish a colony, and the ants that develop from them help her at the very initial stage of 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 of ants has been known for a long time - South American ants 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 substances 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 one day, 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

At first glance, the anthill seems to be a disorderly heap of branches, coniferous needles, grass and earth. However, in fact, a real city lives its own life inside this unsightly heap. Here everyone knows his place, everything is subject to a strict schedule. These tiny insects, which do not have a highly developed intellect, but ants that create an anthill, nevertheless quickly capture any suitable territories and form numerous colonies. Let's see how the anthill works?

Article structure

How is the anthill arranged inside, what is its structure?

Scheme of the structure of the anthill in a section with the designation of functional chambers. The structure of an ant colony.

Most often there are dome-shaped anthills, but sometimes ants prefer to settle in rotten tree trunks, large old stumps. In regions with extremely hot climates (for example, deserts), insects build their dwellings exclusively underground.

From the inside, the anthill looks different, but the structure of allocation and organization of specialized chambers is characteristic of any nest of goosebumps.

Indoor cameras can be divided into the following categories:

• « solarium"- a small chamber under the very dome of the anthill, insects bask in it in the warm season;
• « wintering chamber"- located below the soil level, in it the ants survive the cold, plunging into suspended animation;
• "royal chamber" or " queen room"- here is the uterus, which is engaged in laying eggs;
• "bread barn" or " granary» - designed to store seeds of grasses and trees;
• "kindergarten" or " manger"- chambers in which eggs ripen and ant larvae are born;
• "meat pantry" or " fridge”- they store the corpses of insects, worms and caterpillars.
• "cowshed"- where ants keep and grow aphids.
• « cemetery” is the place where waste and dead individuals are located. It is significantly removed from the anthill, as the ants understand that corpses and waste are a source of disease and infection;

Each sexually mature insect has a clear idea of ​​the location of the chambers. An increase in the anthill leads to the expansion of existing chambers and the construction of new premises.

The depth of the anthill underground can reach up to 2 meters and has an organized complex structure. And the above-ground part can be from 30 cm to 2 m high. All this looks like a huge city.

The depth and structure of an ordinary anthill is amazing. The insides of this amazing structure consist of large fragments of branches. Between them there are many galleries leading to individual chambers, which is a rather complex device.

The height of the structure varies from 30 cm to 2 m, the underground part often exceeds the ground area. The outer coating consists of small twigs, needles, grains of sand and reliably protects ants from dampness, wind and cold. The structure of the underground anthill of a garden ant is similar to the forest one, but on the surface it is only a small sandy mound.

Here are a few photos of what a large forest anthill looks like:

The underground part, as a rule, is comparable, and often exceeds the above-ground part in size. In places where there are large reserves of resources for ants (water, cereals, insects of other species), dwellings can reach gigantic sizes. In some cases, the population of a colony can exceed, imagine, 1.5 million individuals.

An anthill is interesting: up to a third of working ants continuously move needles and branches! Why are they doing this?

The anthill is arranged in such a way that a positive temperature (26-29 degrees Celsius) is constantly maintained inside, which is very important for ants. For this purpose, needles and branches from the lower layer of the coating are transferred to the surface, ventilated and dried. This process is continuous, about a third of the worker ants are involved in it. Thanks to their efforts, favorable conditions are created for the development of larvae and the preservation of food reserves.

How is an ant colony organized?

Often the social hierarchy within an ant colony is compared to the structure of a beehive. These two species are similar in many ways, but the behavior of ants is much more complicated. Just like in human society, these insects have a strict division into classes. The anthill is arranged in such a way that each mature individual has its own purpose.

Depending on a set of certain qualities, each insect is assigned to a particular social post. This takes into account the personal qualities of the individual - excessive aggressiveness, acute sense of smell, reaction speed. In the hierarchy of any anthill there are the following categories of individuals:

• invaders- the most aggressive group in the anthill, attacks neighboring colonies, seizes territories;
• orderlies- isolate sick and wounded ants, if necessary, play the role of surgeons - the injured limb is often amputated (bited off);
• builders one of the largest social groups. They are engaged in the repair of premises, the external coating of the dwelling. Throughout life, they dig new tunnels, carry needles and twigs, maintain the microclimate inside the anthill;
• babysitting- take care of the offspring, from the appearance of the egg to the maturation of the individual. They are constantly near the larvae, turn over, control the process of hatching from eggs and feed the growing offspring;
• guards- they are engaged in guarding the entrances and exits of the anthill, in case of an attack they attack the enemy and do not allow him to get inside the dwelling. Among this category there are the most casualties, attacks on neighbors are a common thing for neighboring colonies. In addition, birds and some animals love to eat ants, and the guards never leave their posts, protecting the entrance to the last.
• foragers. The largest group in the colony. Their mission is to get food for the entire anthill. Every day, miners go in search of food - grass seeds, dead and weakened insects, fruits and berries. If one ant finds a large insect (caterpillar, beetle), then with the help of special signals it communicates with fellow tribesmen, “telling” about the prey. Together, insects can drag even a dead rodent. Often there are attacks on weakened or injured bees, worms, mice. From numerous bites, the victim dies and becomes food for the colony;
• shepherds. Another amazing feature of these insects is that they have peculiar pets. Grass aphids feed on plants, and the liquid released in the process - honeydew - is collected by ants. This liquid is a waste product of aphids, has a sweetish taste and serves as a kind of delicacy for insects. The carbohydrates contained in the honeydew provide the ants with energy. Therefore, aphids are collected in a kind of “herds” and protected in every possible way (for example, from theft by ants from neighboring colonies). To increase the amount of honeydew, shepherds tickle the belly of their cows, stimulating the production of a valuable substance;
• carriers- work together with the shepherds, their main task is to carry the honeydew to special chambers. If necessary, they engage in battle with the invaders;
• storekeepers- are responsible for maintaining stocks inside the chambers. Monitor the maintenance of the temperature regime and the safety of stocks. It is on them that the life of the colony in the winter months depends, since the competent conservation of food resources ensures the prosperity of the anthill;

Depending on the habitat, special “professions” appear. For example, leaf-cutting ants that live in forests collect the leaves of certain trees and plants. After they are transferred to the anthill, twisted in a special way and used to grow mushrooms, which are one of the main products in their diet.

An interesting fact: in some species, the profession is genetically predetermined, which is reflected in the structure of the body of the ant. And in other species, the profession is acquired by individuals gradually and they are able to replace each other's functions if necessary.

Ant life in an anthill

Every ant colony, regardless of species, has one or more queens. This is a large sexually mature individual, a characteristic difference is large transparent wings. They are necessary to search for males, immediately after successful fertilization, the need for them disappears and they disappear.

The fertilized queen lays her eggs in the lowest and most extensive chamber of the anthill, deep underground. And the size of an anthill underground can reach up to two meters! This is necessary to protect offspring from predators, temperature changes and other dangerous factors.

The way of life of the queen for each species is different. So, wild forest ants have several hundred young unfertilized females in the colony. After mating, females lay eggs throughout the forest, next to them new colonies form.

Ants in a colony adjacent to a human always have several dozen male drones. The vast majority of the population consists of underdeveloped females. In a small colony, there is only one queen uterus, carrying out the continuation of the family.

If the conditions in the house or apartment are favorable (warmth, dampness, unsanitary conditions), then the number of ants increases rapidly. In this case, several new queens capable of reproduction appear, which enhances the possibilities for the development of the colony. These females do not form new colonies, but remain part of the existing one. Of course, with an increase in the number of queens, the spread of ants around the house accelerates.

Relationships and communication of ants

Among these small insects there is also a peculiar struggle for power. For example, in the colonies of red ants, cases of the capture of settlements of another species were observed. The queen uterus finds a colony of black or forest relatives weakened as a result of the attack and takes the place of the dead queen. After she lays eggs, and when red ants hatch from them, they actually enslave a colony of another species.

The reverse situation also takes place. During the attack of one anthill on another, soldiers steal the eggs of opponents and take them to themselves. After the hatched insects become servants and work all their lives for the benefit of a foreign colony. The life of many varieties of tropical ants is built on this principle: for example, Amazon ants are exclusively engaged in attacks on neighbors and capturing larvae, all the hard work inside their dwellings and life support occur only at the expense of slaves.

In nature, one can also observe the opposite situation, when working individuals of neighboring anthills establish contact and exchange food. This is a kind of message to the neighbors about the world and a proposal for unification into one colony.

This is how interesting the anthill is arranged - this is an amazing structure with a complex organization, reminiscent of a big city. How much time and labor does it cost these tiny insects to rebuild an ant colony, the aerial part of which is threatened every moment by predators or natural phenomena.

The anthill is not the best neighborhood

Of course, forest ants bring invaluable benefits - the destruction of carrion, maintaining the population of birds and small animals. It is categorically impossible to ruin the housing of forest orderlies, but it is unacceptable to endure neighborhood in your own house or apartment. That is why, at the first sign of the appearance of these insects in or near the house, measures must be taken - getting rid of trash, the use of folk methods of struggle. If the moment is missed and the colony has reached an impressive size, the best solution would be to contact specialists.

Life in an anthill - video

Interesting facts about ants have always interested people, as these insects are considered one of the most fascinating and unusual. These common insects are very responsible, hardworking, and, despite their small size, very strong. All ants live in colonies, each of which has its own queen or, as it is also called, the uterus.

Red ant myrmica

All ants, like humans, have their own professions, and they lead an identical lifestyle. As for the specialization of these insects, they are:

• military, soldiers and doctors - these insects perform their specific functions;
• builders and engineers - build housing and equip it, as well as deal with communication issues;
• nurses;
• miners;
• livestock breeders and farmers;
• leaf-cutters, reapers, wood-borers and grave-diggers.

These are far from all the professions that are available in the ant family, but still the most important. As for the nests of domestic ants, in addition to the working class, there are also so-called scouts. These insects are not respected among everyone else and perform their functions.

As for the arrangement of the anthill, the typical housing of these insects consists of:

• the royal chamber - a female lives in this compartment, which ants take care of in the process of life;
• chambers with eggs, larvae or pupae;
• wintering chamber;
• meat pantry;
• grain barn;
• barn;
• cemetery;
• solarium.

Anthill device

Among other things, without fail, each anthill is equipped with an entrance, and on top it is covered with various needles and twigs. This coating is primarily intended to shelter the anthill from the weather.

• ants are descended from predators such as wasps, which became extinct in the time of the dinosaurs;
• the closest relatives of ants are cockroaches;
• the queen of ants lives for thirty years, but the working individuals do not exist for more than three years;
• ants, despite their small size, are able to carry objects five thousand times heavier than themselves;
• Ants are considered one of the most intelligent insects, as their brain consists of 250,000 cells;
• each colony of ants has its own characteristic smell;
• the ant queen never leaves her home and is exclusively engaged in laying eggs;
• the bites of some species of ants can be deadly to the human body, as they are very poisonous;
• ants are considered one of the oldest insects, the first individuals were recorded more than a hundred million years ago;
• ants multiply quite rapidly, so when they enter a human dwelling, getting rid of them is quite problematic;
• these insects move exclusively in formation;
• ants can also show not only aggression towards each other, but also care, which is why if some individual is injured, others will look after him throughout the entire recovery period, take care and even bring food;
• all ants perform their specific functions and tasks;
• ants can cultivate living organisms in order to satisfy their needs.

These are not all the interesting facts about ants for children that have been seen at the present time, but the most important of them.

I would also like to note the fact that it is formic acid that has an excellent analgesic effect and copes well with such pathological processes as rheumatism, arthritis, gout, arthrosis and many other diseases.

They can safely stay under water for several days.

A feature of ants is also that insects can be completely safe under water for several days, and this does not threaten them with any changes at all.

No matter how far the ants have gone from their home, they always know how to find their way back. This can only be explained by the fact that these insects leave behind a kind of trail consisting of pheromones, and it is thanks to him that they constantly return to the anthill.

As for the breeding process of ants, it is rightfully considered quite effective. Only one female is engaged in the production of offspring in the anthill, which is called the queen or uterus. Since she is constantly in the anthill and never leaves it, it is she who is engaged in laying eggs and caring for them. In addition to the uterus, there are other females in the anthill, but none of them can reproduce.

The appearance of offspring in ants occurs only once a year, when young males and females emerge from pupae.

If ants live at home, then their life activity takes place according to completely different rules and laws.

For the winter, ants warm the anthill

I would also like to note that ants do not hibernate at all in winter, and their life continues to go on in the same way. These insects remain to spend the winter in the same anthills, the only thing they do to prevent them from being cold in winter is to insulate them.

In winter, these insects are not particularly active, so much less food is needed for their existence.

Note! In the northern regions, ants can exist even at extremely low temperatures; cases have been recorded when these insects survived at an air temperature of -58 degrees.

Ants can exist even at extremely low temperatures

Reproduction of ants occurs quite rapidly, which is why there are a huge number of individuals in anthills.

What are the benefits and harms of ants

Many people mistakenly think that ants are only a nuisance to humans. It has been scientifically proven that in just one year these insects are capable of destroying about one million pests. In addition, it is the ants that are involved in the pollination process.

Also, it is ants that can significantly increase soil fertility. This is due to the fact that insects lay underground passages and thereby loosen the earth. And in the process of this, it is saturated with oxygen and enriched with minerals and organic compounds. Therefore, the role of ants in human life and the environment is quite significant. Even our ancestors believed that if there are ants on a piece of land, then this is considered the first sign of a good and fruitful place.

In addition to the positive impact, ants can also lead to negative consequences. This primarily concerns the damage to peonies, which, due to the influence of ants, become ugly and distorted.

Ants also have a negative impact when they settle in a human dwelling. It is in this case that they cause a lot of inconvenience. Get rid of these insects in the house should be immediately, as delay threatens a significant increase in their numbers. Fortunately, nowadays in any hardware store you can buy various drugs and means to combat them. If the number reaches a huge number and it is impossible to cope with insects on your own, then you need to use the help of professionals who use only professional means in the fight against insects, which cannot be purchased on their own.

It is very important to keep the room clean in the process with these insects, thus, having penetrated there, they will see that there is nothing interesting for them here, and they will calmly leave the room.

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 the lower lip, the tongue is considered the most important part - 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 the mechanical and chemical influences of the 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 constructed 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 of 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!