Harvester ants: life in nature and in home farms. Four stages of ant development: complete transformation Stages of ant development

Ants are insects whose lifestyle is defined as social. They live in colonies in anthills built in wood or soil. Ant reproduction is a rather interesting process. The female, called the queen, produces offspring herself, constantly being in the nest.

About the life of ants

The ant family contains:

• queen (female, queen);
• males;
• larvae;
• working individuals.

Thanks to formic acid, these insects very easily navigate the terrain and very easily find the right path even in the most complex labyrinth. They also use formic acid when defending their home or when attacking an enemy. Since these insects do not know how to live alone, they feel most comfortable in the company of their relatives.

Their teamwork is also more productive. However, these hardworking insects spend a lot of time resting. Almost a quarter of the time is spent on hygiene procedures. Ants spend three hours a day sleeping.

Every ant family has a personal space that is protected from other insects. There, insects create paths, the order of which is constantly monitored by working individuals. Such paths can be very long. For example, inside an anthill their length can sometimes reach seven kilometers.

It happens that conflicts occur between individual ants inside the nest, after which weak individuals are forced to flee, taking the larvae with them.

Reproduction of house ants

The size of the female house ant is much larger than that of ordinary working ants. If we talk about how ants reproduce, the process begins with mating. In the female it occurs only once in her life, despite the fact that she can live for about 12 years. At first she has wings, which she needs for the mating flight. Immediately after fertilization, the female bites off her wings - they are no longer needed.

Eggs are laid in a secluded place, which the female finds on her own. After 2-3 weeks, larvae begin to emerge from the eggs. After about six months, they pupate, and after some time, worker ants begin to appear.

Until this time, the female does not feed at all. She feeds the larvae using special glands that secrete nutrients using the so-called female fat.

Immediately after their appearance, the worker ants begin to search for food for the queen and larvae. The female can lay eggs throughout the year. Males develop from unfertilized eggs. They also have wings for mating flight. However, immediately after mating the males die.

Peculiarities of reproduction of forest ants

Unlike a colony of domestic insects, in forest ant families there can be only one queen, which produces offspring. Winged individuals fly out to mate in late May–early June. Usually the number of individuals in the wood ant family is small.

An interesting fact is that only insects of one sex appear in one colony. This pattern makes inbreeding impossible, which prevents degeneration. Females lay eggs in quantities that sometimes amount to several hundred. After a while, males, females or working individuals emerge from them. The number of insects in each family is regulated by its needs.

Ants. The Secret Power of Nature: Video

How ants reproduce is interesting not only to ordinary people, but also to scientists. The numerous colony of insects delights and terrifies. In the wild, insects build anthills and nests in trees and houses. The development of an ant goes through a full cycle of transformation. The whole process takes about a month.

insect family

Development

The stages of development have a complete cycle - egg, larva, pupa, adult. When ants lay eggs depends on weather conditions. This usually happens with the onset of persistent heat - in May. A second mating season is possible in June.

• The queen can lay up to several hundred ant eggs. Special cells are provided for them. It also contains larvae. Working individuals help maintain optimal conditions in the anthill.
• After about a week, the eggs hatch into ant larvae. Adults help to be born by gnawing through the shell. After hatching, the larvae have the shape of white worms and are extremely voracious. They eat large amounts of plant and animal food. Along with plants and seeds, worker ants carry aphids, carrion, and worms to the larvae.
• The rapid development of larvae lasts about 2 weeks. After which the worm stops feeding and turns into a pupa. Some varieties of larvae spin a cocoon. A few days later, the ant emerges from the pupa in the form of a full-fledged insect, but white. Under the influence of light, the cover hardens, darkens, and ants of the usual black and red color appear.

The entire development cycle from egg to adult lasts about a month. Unfavorable climatic conditions can slow down the process. Insects reproduce quickly, have a clear hierarchy, live in huge colonies, and work together to obtain food. At the head of this entire complex process is a fertile female.

Immediately after birth, future ants end up in special ant nurseries. Let's take a closer look at one of the most mysterious wonders of nature. After a couple of weeks, the ant larvae are taken to the nursery:

After the queen has laid eggs, they are kept in special so-called “packages”. In these same bundle bags, adult ants carry eggs from one place to another.

As soon as the eggs begin to show signs of life and transform into larvae, they are immediately taken to the nursery, where they will continue to grow up. Until the eggs become larvae, the ants keep them suspended.

Ants constantly look after the larvae, turning them over and monitoring their condition.

Dealing with the “young animals” is the job of worker ants.

However, everyone is involved in the work.

Even soldier ants occasionally look into the nursery.

The ants clean the larvae and feed. The main food of harvester ants is grains. Strong soldiers crush whole seeds, breaking them into smaller pieces.

After this, workers grind the pieces into flour.

By moistening the flour with their saliva, the worker ants prepare a puree, which serves as food for both the larvae and the workers themselves.

Sometimes ants lay special food eggs, which they give to the larvae. This doesn't happen often.

An ant with an egg hurries to the hungry larva. Here is the feeding process.

It also happens that what hatches from an egg is not a future ant, but, as it is commonly called, a feeding larva. These larvae are larger than normal ones and represent nothing more than a large chunk of nutrients. This larva will serve as food for the entire colony.

The difference in size between ordinary and food larvae.

When the larva matures and the process of transformation into a pupa begins, workers take it to a kindergarten.

A video showing the entire process of caring for pupae and larvae.

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The ant belongs to the class insects, phylum arthropods, order Hymenoptera, family ants (Formicidae). According to their organization, ants belong to the group of social insects with a clear division into three castes: workers, females and males.

• Blood Red Ant (Slave Master)(Formica sanguinea)

widespread in Europe, central Russia, and found in China and Mongolia. Working individuals are up to 8 mm long and have a black body with an orange head. The queen ant grows up to 10 mm and is distinguished by a red head and orange chest. Ants make summer nests in half-rotten stumps, in the ground and under stones; in winter, the family moves to another nest located at the base of trees. The typical way of life of this type of ant is predatory raids on the anthills of brown forest, quick and other ants. Captured pupae are brought to the nest and raised as "slaves".

• Yellow Amazon Ant ( Polyergus rufescens)

a species of ants distinguished by its rather large size: females reach almost a centimeter in length, males are somewhat more modest in size - 6-7.5 mm, “soldiers” are even smaller and rarely grow more than 5-7 mm. Females and “soldiers” are colored yellow-reddish, the body is usually covered with black hairs. Male ants are black, with brown limbs and antennae. The species lives in European countries, in the western regions of Asia, in western Siberia. The Amazon ant prefers to settle in damp forests, choosing clearings and forest edges to build an anthill. Amazons lead a slave-owning lifestyle, kidnapping other ants in the pupal stage, and then using them as slaves and labor.

• Legionnaire ants or nomad ants (dorilins, wandering ants) ( Dorylinae)

a subfamily of nomadic ants that live exclusively in the tropics and subtropical zone. Legionnaire ants are especially common in Central and South America and are found in Africa. They live in huge colonies, the main part of which are working individuals. Nomadic ants destroy everything in their path that is suitable for food. Despite the average size of 2-4 mm, this type of ant “takes over” with its numbers, destroying crops of cultivated plants during invasions and feeding on their juices.

Where do ants live?

These insects can be observed on all continents, in all natural areas and climatic zones. They are absent only in the harsh climate of the Arctic and Antarctica, on the cold islands of Greenland and Iceland, as well as in sultry deserts. In areas with temperate and cold climates, ants hibernate in winter.

Basically, these insects build anthills for themselves in rotten or rotten wood, in the soil and under small stones. Some species of ants invade other people's nests or live near humans.

The food of ants is varied and depends on the species. The diet of most species consists of plant and animal foods, and each individual eats several times a day.

The source of protein necessary for the growth and development of ant larvae in nature are dead insects, animal remains, trophic eggs laid by the queen when there is an excess of food, eggs of pests and semi-digested food of adult ants. House ant larvae feed on dairy products, gelatin and leftover egg dishes. The diet of the ant queen also consists of protein food, which is specially chewed by the ants caring for her.

The basis of the carbohydrate menu of most ants is honeydew (sugar-containing leaf juices secreted during temperature changes) and honeydew - the sweet secretions of insects, especially aphids.

Dairy farmer ants raise aphids for themselves, graze them, nurse them, and protect their offspring from other ants. These shepherds milk their pets and feed on their milk.

Additional components of ants' food in nature can be seeds and roots of plants, nuts, and tree sap.

Some ants raise colonies of fungi in anthills as food, and also feed on caterpillars and insects.

Reaper ants consume dry plant seeds, dry fruits and grain crops. They are able to store 1 kg of raw materials, which makes it possible to feed an entire colony of ants in winter. Leaf-cutter ants bring pieces of leaves to the anthill, chew them and store them in a kind of greenhouse chambers. Over time, mushrooms grow from these pieces in the storage, which are the main food for these gourmet ants.

Centromyrmex ants feed exclusively on termites. The Dracula ant drinks the juices secreted by its own larvae, and feeds the larvae with various insects. House ants are omnivores.

In winter, when it gets significantly colder, the ants hibernate, during which they starve.

Most species, however, lead an active lifestyle in winter in a sealed anthill, feeding on abundant supplies.

Ant Reproduction

Ants reproduce in two ways and occur twice a year. In the first method, a young queen with a certain number of workers separates from the community and forms a new anthill. The second method is the mating flight, during which a female ant is fertilized by several males from a foreign anthill. After this, she lays eggs, from which worker ants emerge. The males die after some time. Until the workers appear, the female feeds on nutrients from the remains of the wing muscles. From fertilized eggs, worker ants and females are born, and from unfertilized eggs, males are born.

These insects are not at all harmful, of course, if they do not look for a human home for their habitat. Therefore, it is not worth exterminating them just like that: after all, the ant is an important link in the ecological chain.

How does an anthill work? Life of ants

The lifestyle of ants is very similar to human society: ants, like people, have their own professions.

Look at the structure of the anthill:

• Builder ants and engineers arrange their homes, build tunnels and communications.
• The military, or soldiers, protect the anthill from enemies and seize territory.
• Doctors treat relatives, isolate sick individuals, and, if necessary, perform surgical operations - chewing off damaged paws.
• Nurses look after the larvae.
• Foragers collect food and put it in rooms in the anthill specially designed for this.
• Farmers or livestock breeders are engaged in breeding aphids, cicadas, copperheads, and scale insects. They herd their “animals” and then milk them for delicious honeydew (the sweet secretion of these insects).
• Leaf-cutter ants collect and curl plant leaves, and then grow colonies of fungi from them, which serve as food for the ants. There are also fungus-farming ants, which use pieces of insects or feces to grow mushrooms.
• Harvester ants collect plant seeds.
• Carpenter ants collect the gum that plants secrete.
• Gravedigger ants deliver their deceased ants to the cemetery.
• These interesting insects have other equally interesting professions.

• The bullet ant, which lives in the tropics, has a potent poison, which, when bitten, causes sensations in the victim that are several times greater than the pain from a bee or wasp sting. Some Indian tribes use this ant poison in the initiation rite of boys: a bag filled with this type of ant is placed on the hand of the future man; as a result of the bites, the hand swells and hurts greatly. Apparently, in this way the tribal leaders are trying to instill perseverance in the boys.
• Residents of Africa and Asian countries gladly include ant “eggs”, which are actually larvae, in their menus. It is believed that this delicacy is rich in proteins and increases potency. Mexicans consume this dish on holidays, spreading eggs on corn tortillas like Russians spread red caviar on a sandwich.
• The queen, who is the founder of an ant colony, usually lives 5-6 years. However, cases have been recorded when the queen lived up to 14 years - an absolute record among insects!

So, on one of the shelves of my father’s library I discovered a book by I.A. Khalifman "Ants" 63 years of publication. You can find books at.

It is, in my opinion, quite difficult to read because of the endless references to the “fathers of communism.” In particular, to F. Engels.

However, there is also a lot of useful information there, and it is worth studying.

Here, it seems, flashed here a particularly juicy, unusually shiny, as if varnished, rounded belly. Over time, it is possible to see the entire insect, which is noticeably larger than the rest of the ants in the nest. This is a female, the queen of the family, the queen.
Let's watch her more closely. The patience of the observer is rewarded if he manages to see how the insect, rising on long legs, bends and, sticking its abdomen forward, tensely moves it, squeezing out something small, barely noticeable white. A moment later, the worker ants that have run into the chamber are already scurrying around, they quickly stroke the female with their antennae, lick her with their tongue, and one of them removes a white, dully shining point from the end of the abdomen with its mandibles. The ant freezes for a split second, and then it is possible to see that it has an egg in its mandibles.

The video above illustrates the process perfectly.

Let's not lose sight of him now. If it is still lost, we will wait for the next one, watch the third, and finally watch the twentieth, until we see how the laid egg is delivered to another chamber. Here it is placed on a lump of white grains, which is called a bag.

Here is a photo from my formica:

In the circle is a package of eggs that were collected by goosebumps.

Most ants have eggs of a characteristic oblong shape; in highly developed leaf cutters they are round, and in some primitive species they are almost rod-shaped. The sizes of eggs laid even by the same queen are not always the same, however, the largest ones are no more than half a millimeter in length, and usually the egg is much smaller. Under all conditions, this speck of dust is hundreds, thousands of times smaller than those comparatively large light oval bodies that many, of course, have seen and which are persistently called ant eggs in the community, although these are pupae in cocoons.

At the moment of birth, the egg was picked up by an ant nearby and carried to the next chamber or further away. Here, dozens of other eggs glued into bags flicker damply and, it seems, even glow. Every now and then workers run up to them. Some quickly lick the bag, some spend a long time rearranging it, assembling it in a new way, and some, taking an egg from a pile, carry it, then return it to its place.

As soon as the egg is laid, it immediately begins to be fed. Don't let this seem like a slip of the tongue. Nurse ants really don’t just sort out and rearrange eggs, they lick them, and this is not a matter of special cleanliness of the ant family. Ant saliva contains nutrients. As they are absorbed, they penetrate the shell, and the egg gradually increases in volume. It turns out that, unlike the eggs of many insects, the ant egg in the form in which it is picked up by the midwife does not yet contain the entire amount of nutrients required for the maturation of the larva. Thanks to nourishing licking, the eggs grow, and at the same time saliva, which has bactericidal properties, kills harmful mold spores on their shell and glues them into bags.

This can also be observed:

A larva hatches from a mature egg. She is so small that her movements are invisible to the naked eye. However, the nurse ants will find it and take it from the package of eggs to the package of young larvae. With the help of a magnifying glass, it is possible to see that the yellow-white worm-larva consists of 12 rings, that it is eyeless, legless, that it has only a hint of antennae, but its mouth expressively speaks of gluttony.

I didn’t really understand about the mouth, but the larvae apparently are these shiny oblong things, sometimes curled up:

The larvae feed in the usual way and, absorbing a lot of food, grow many times faster than eggs. Nurse workers feed the larvae by regurgitating gland secretions, a vitamin-rich liquid food. If yeast is added to artificial food in an experiment, the larvae really begin to grow by leaps and bounds.

I haven’t tried to experiment with yeast, and I think it won’t be a very successful experiment for messors.

The food absorbed by the larva is far from completely absorbed. But in bags the larvae do not stain each other. The waste accumulates in the body and is ejected only before pupation in the form of a fecal ball - meconium, which the working ants take to the sewage warehouse or are immediately removed from the nest.

I have never seen such a thing either.

It has been known for two hundred years that adult ants feed eggs and larvae, but only relatively recently it was discovered that the larvae also feed adult ants with secretions oozing through the chitinous integument of the body. These secretions are licked off by the ants.

We already know that ants, not without reason and reason, transfer brood from chamber to chamber, from dry or bright places to damp and shade. It seems that the larvae of many ants in dry conditions and in the light cease to produce secretions so attractive to adults, and this is why nannies take the young out of the illuminated chambers. When in experiments nurses give specially colored food to the larvae, soon other workers lick the colored exudate from their bodies. The bosoms of many ants are filled with this food. Thus, the larvae serve as a part of the stomach of the family; food for the adult sisters is prepared and digested in them. Such counter feeding, exchange of food or secretions of food glands, mutual feeding of members of the community of different ages - individuals of different generations or different forms - is called trophallaxis in science . This is an important component of the metabolism that unites the family.

Let's move on to the final stage:

But the larva, having received a certain minimum of food, completes growth and begins to pupate. It straightens, becomes stiff, and in most ants it is wrapped in a gray-yellow cocoon made of dense silk. Sometimes nannies drag the grown and mature larvae in advance to the depths of the nest, where it is quieter. When the cocoon is ready, the same nannies cut off the silk threads with which it is attached to the lumps of earth, and, having cleared it of grains of sand and dust, take it to the cocoon storage.

This is illustrated on the antclub website with the following picture:

Among the Messors:

There are ants whose pupae are naked.

The photo quality is crap, but these guys with black eyes are naked dolls. At first they are white, and then they darken and become brown, as in the previous photo with the larvae.

Completely white and almost transparent, as if cast from thin films of stearin, the pupae become cloudy over time, become reddish, and then completely darken.

Worker ants lift cocoons with maturing pupae closer to the exit or even to the surface, or even take them outside the anthill. After some time they are returned to the nest again.

I haven’t noticed this with my own people - they keep them in a cell with the uterus, they don’t take them anywhere. Unless a formico-shaking happens, then they start running back and forth with them in a panic.

So, neither eggs, nor larvae, nor pupae are left to their own devices. Each ant is born, as it were, three times, and each time, as a rule, with the help of the older sisters of the workers, who act as midwives. A worker ant accepts an egg just laid by the female. Another one transfers a tiny larva that has hatched from an egg and attaches it to a living package. And, finally, some more ants open the cocoon - after all, when the time comes for a mature insect to free itself from the silk shirt, its jaws are usually too soft. Even older ants, not without difficulty, break the strong shell of the cocoon from the outside, helping their sister leave the cradle. They do this, although without any special ceremony, but without causing any damage, which is very important: the ant is still tender and fragile.

And in the end, here is my handsome man:

I stood on my feet for the first time :)

This was about 5 days ago - now he has darkened and you can no longer distinguish him from the other guys. But there are 2 more on the way (already darkened pupae) in the coming days they should also join the family.

If anyone has interesting or more up-to-date information on the topic, please comment

Because the entire post is based on quotes from the book - I don’t include the “mine” tag... because that’s basically it.