An ant colony is an underground lair where ants live. A lair is a underground or other enclosed place that Animals use to hide themselves while at Sleep, Hibernation or when they take part in Reproduction Ants are social Insects of the family Formicidae and along with the related families of Wasps and Bees belong to the order Colonies consist of a series of underground chambers, connected to each other and the surface of the earth by small tunnels. There are rooms for nurseries, food storage, and mating. The colony is built and maintained by legions of worker ants, who carry tiny bits of dirt in their mandibles and deposit them near the exit of the colony, forming an ant-hill. Insect mandibles are a pair of appendages near the insect’s mouth and the most anterior of the three pairs of oral appendages (the Labrum is more anterior but

Ant colonies are eusocial, and are very much like those found in other social Hymenoptera, though the various groups of these developed sociality independently through convergent evolution. Eusociality ( Greek eu: "good" + "social" is a term used for the highest level of social organization in a hierarchical classification Hymenoptera is one of the larger orders of Insects comprising the sawflies, Wasps Bees and Ants The name refers to Convergent evolution describes the acquisition of the same biological trait in unrelated lineages Eggs are laid by one or sometimes more queens. In most Birds and Reptiles an egg ( Latin ovum) is the Zygote, resulting from Fertilization of the Ovum. Queens are different in structure, they are the largest ones among all ants, especially their abdomen and thorax which are larger than most ants'. In Vertebrates such as Mammals the abdomen (belly constitutes the part of the body between the Thorax (chest and Pelvis. The thorax is a division of an Animal 's body that lies between the head and the Abdomen. Their tasks are to lay eggs and produce more offspring. Most of the eggs that are laid by the queens grow up to become wingless, sterile females called "workers". Periodically, swarms of new winged queens and males (the alates) are produced in most species, which leave to mate. An alate is a winged reproductive of a Social insect (especially Ants or Termites but the term can also be applied to Aphids and some Thrips The males die shortly thereafter, while the surviving queens either found new colonies or occasionally return to their old one. The surviving queens can live up to around 15 years.

People raise ant colonies in captivity for research and as a hobby. An "ant terrarium" used for this purpose is called a formicarium. They are often made thin enough that you can see the entire colony inside their nest. These are also called ant farms.

Unicoloniality and supercolonies

Most commonly, ants from different nests exhibit aggression towards each other. However, some ants exhibit the phenomenon called unicoloniality: worker ants may freely mix between different nests. Another organization is supercoloniality. The group of nests where ants do not exhibit mutual aggression is called supercolony, while ants from different supercolonies of the same species do exhibit mutual aggression. Populations in supercolonies do not necessarily span a contiguous area. ^[1]

Until 2000, the largest known ant supercolony was on the Ishikari coast of Hokkaidō, Japan. is a subprefecture of Hokkaidō prefecture, Japan, located in the western part of the island WikipediaWikiProject Japanese prefectures for guidelines --> formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japan 's For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Japan topics. The colony was estimated to comprise of 306 million worker ants and 1 million queen ants living in 45,000 nests interconnected by underground passages over an area of 2. 7 km². ^[2]

In 2000, an enormous supercolony of Argentine ants was found in Southern Europe (report published in 2002). The Argentine ant ( Linepithema humile, formerly Iridomyrmex humilis) is a tiny dark Ant native to northern Argentina, Uruguay The term Southern Europe can have four definitions geographical political climatic phytogeographic Of 33 ant populations tested along the 6,004 km stretch along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts in Southern Europe 30 belonged to one supercolony with estimated millions of nests and billions of workers, interspersed with 3 populations of another supercolony. ^[1] The researchers claim that this case of unicoloniality cannot be explained by loss of their genetic diversity due to the genetic bottleneck of the imported ants. A population bottleneck (or genetic bottleneck) is an Evolutionary event in which a significant percentage of a population or species is killed or otherwise prevented

Another supercolony, measuring approximately 100 km wide, was found beneath Melbourne, Australia in 2004. Melbourne ( is the second most populous city in Australia, with a Metropolitan area population of approximately 3 For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. ^[3]

Ant-hills

A clay ant hill

An ant-hill, in its simplest form, is a pile of earth, sand, pine needles, or clay or a composite of these and other materials that build up at the entrances of the subterranean dwellings of ant colonies as they are excavated. EARTH was a short-lived Japanese vocal trio which released 6 singles and 1 album between 2000 and 2001 Sand is a naturally occurring Granular material composed of finely divided rock and Mineral particles This article is about the tree For other uses of the term "pine" see Pine (disambiguation. Clay is a naturally occurring material composed primarily of fine-grained Minerals which show plasticity through a variable range of Water content, and An ant colony is an underground Lair where Ants live Colonies consist of a series of underground chambers connected to each other and the surface of the earth by A colony is built and maintained by legions of worker ants, who carry tiny bits of dirt and/or vegetation in their mandibles and deposit them near the exit of the colony. Ants are social Insects of the family Formicidae and along with the related families of Wasps and Bees belong to the order Insect mandibles are a pair of appendages near the insect’s mouth and the most anterior of the three pairs of oral appendages (the Labrum is more anterior but They normally deposit the dirt or vegetation at the top of the hill to prevent it from sliding back into the colony, but in some species they actively sculpt the materials into specific shapes, and may create nest chambers within the mound.

Note that in some areas of the world including English-speaking countries of Africa, in common speech the term ant-hill (also written as "anthill") refers to a termite mound. The termites are a group of Social Insects usually classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera (but see also taxonomy

Forest ant colonies are a protected species in Switzerland

The Swiss law prohibits killing forest ants or tampering with forest ant colonies since 1966. ^[4]

See also

• Nuno sa punso A Filipino superstition about ant hills. For the Portuguese Name see Nuno (given name A Nuno or Nuno sa Punso ( Duwende) is a Dwarf -like creature in Philippine
• Ant colony optimization, a technique in computer science inspired by ant colonies

External links

Journal of Insect Science: The nest architecture of the Florida harvester ant

Ant Hill Wood, a site about ants

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Tatiana Giraud, Jes S. The ant colony optimization Algorithm (ACO introduced by Marco Dorigo in 1992 in his PhD thesis is a probabilistic technique for solving computational Computer science (or computing science) is the study and the Science of the theoretical foundations of Information and Computation and their Pedersen, and Laurent Kelle. Evolution of supercolonies: The Argentine ants of southern Europe. The National Academy of Sciences, 2002.
2. ^ Higashi, S. and K. Yamauchi. Influence of a Supercolonial Ant Formica (Formica) yessensis Forel on the Distribution of Other Ants in Ishikari Coast. Japanese Journal of Ecology, No. 29, 257-264, 1997.
3. ^ Super ant colony hits Australia. BBC News, 2004.
4. ^ Parc jurassien vaudois - Les Fourmis des bois