NATS 4215 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Lasius, Biological Specificity, Fetal Position
20 Jan 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The queens of some ant spp can live longer than 20 years (the record is 29 years: these ant queens probably live longer than any other insects, record holder is lived in captivity. There are about 14 000 ant species that have been identified and only about 100 that have been reasonably well studied so depending on which species you study there will be a different estimate. In some colony there is only one queen: certain ant colonies there are many queens in one colony, colony size can have up to 100 queens. Colony usually starts with 1 queen and stays with 1 queen however some colonies (such as wood ants) are massive. Outside the nest, ants follow conspecific pheromone trails. There are at least 2 distinct types of pheromone trails (based on two different types of chemical signals: trails leading to a new food source, trails leading to a potentially good location for a new nest.
