Photos of various types of ants and interesting features of their life. About ants: description and features of the species
At the head of the anthill is usually mother is big insect, which continuously lays eggs, providing the replenishment of the community with new residents. Worker ants solve daily tasks of caring for eggs and pupae, searching for food, repairing the anthill. Soldiers stand guard over the entrances to the dwelling and cut off strangers. Males and females participate in the process of reproduction.
soldiers
Ants warriors are a separate subspecies of simple workers, slightly different from the last large sizes. In addition, such an ant more developed mandibles, the muscles of which occupy most of the head. In some species of ants, due to the characteristic structure of the head, the soldiers have lost the ability to eat independently - as a result, the workers have to feed them.
The main function of soldier ants in the community is the protection of the territory and the anthill from the penetration of enemies into it, the protection of foragers who deliver food. In addition, soldiers with their powerful jaws help to break up the prey into several parts if the workers cannot carry it away on their own.
The role of the worker ant in the family and structural features
Ants builders are first view, which appears in the uterus after the foundation of a new anthill. It is they who are engaged in the construction of the colony, the preparation of food and the care of eggs and pupae. In a developed anthill, workers have a predominant number among all individuals.
REFERENCE! The distribution of professions among ant workers depends on their general condition and mental tendencies.
So, initiative insects with a good reaction become scouts and hunters, and slow and unhurried individuals go to pasture aphids and collect sweetish secretions. In addition, the change of profession occurs with aging.
Juveniles usually do work inside the nest - taking care of the eggs, females, build new passages and chambers.
In the event that a significant part of the workers of one profession dies - for example, they are destroyed by birds or as a result chemical processing, their duties are redistributed among the remaining inhabitants of the anthill.
How strong are ants and how much weight do they lift?
The insect has a huge margin of endurance - an ant can lift and carry 50 times its own weight. Moreover, if several individuals work together and combine their efforts, this indicator can increase many times over. This is possible due to the fact that the ant has a large percentage of muscles per unit of body mass.
The strength of ants allows them to successfully complete the tasks of finding and harvesting food. If the insect is unable to pick up prey, it can for a long time drag after yourself.
REFERENCE! Many ants, connecting with their paws, can form long living bridges to overcome streams or crevices. Such ligaments can withstand a weight of several kilograms.
Who is the main king ant?
All life in an anthill relies to the queen mother. It does not participate either in the protection of the anthill or in the collection of food, however, it is this individual who is entrusted with the task of maintaining and increasing the number of the colony.
A uterus is a former female that has been fertilized by a male and was able to organize a new anthill. In the process of growing the first population, they bite off their wings.
The uterus lives up to 20 years, laying up to 500 thousand eggs during this time. As long as this individual is alive, the colony has every chance of recovery, no matter what losses it suffers.
In the anthill, the hierarchy of society is clearly established. At the head of the entire settlement is the uterus. The most numerous are workers who, depending on their preferences, can perform a variety of tasks - searching for food, reconnaissance, caring for the uterus and eggs. Soldiers are individuals with large powerful jaws that guard the anthill and foragers.
Photo
Next, you will see a photo of the hierarchy of ants - from workers to soldiers: 
Ants are among the most familiar to humans, which can be found in the forest, at home and on the street. They belong to the Hymenoptera family, are unique and extremely interesting to observe. Insects build dwellings, which are commonly called anthills.
The body of an ordinary red wood ant is clearly divided into three parts, from which a large head stands out. The main eyes are complex. In addition to them, the insect has three more additional eyes, which are designed to determine the level of illumination.
The antennae are a sensitive organ of touch, perceiving subtle vibrations, temperature and direction of air flows, and are capable of performing a chemical analysis of substances. The upper jaw is significantly developed, and the lower jaw helps in construction work and food transfer.
The paws have claws that give the ants the ability to easily climb vertically up. Worker ants are underdeveloped females and do not have wings, unlike males and the queen, which later discards them. On the abdomen of ants is placed a sting used for food and protection.
In the moment bites insect ants acid is released, which belongs to the varieties of poisons. In small quantities, the substance is not dangerous for the human body, but painful phenomena can be observed: redness of the skin, swelling, itching. - ant-like insects so much so that many scientists tend to consider them to be the closest relatives.
Species insect ants there are up to a million on earth, which is about half of all living beings on the planet. They settled all over the world and are found even in.
There are varieties of ants different sizes(from one to fifty millimeters); colors: red, black, glossy, matte, less often green. Each type of ant is different. outward signs, behavior, as well as a certain way of life.
Of the varieties of ants, more than a hundred settled on the territory of our country. In addition to forest ants, the most famous of them are termites, pharaoh, meadow, leaf cutters and house ants.
A dangerous species are red or fiery. Adults are up to four millimeters in size, have pin-tipped antennae on their heads, and have a poisonous sting.
There are flying species insect ants, wings which, unlike the usual varieties, are feature all members, regardless of gender.
The nature and lifestyle of the ant
The life of insect ants actively affects biogenesis due to their abundance. They are unique in their type of nutrition, way of life and influence on organisms, plants and animals.
With their vital activity, construction and restructuring of anthills, they loosen the soil and help plants, nourishing their roots with moisture and air. In their nests are created ideal conditions for the development of bacteria that enrich the soil with useful substances and trace elements.
Ant excrement serves as fertilizer. Various herbs grow rapidly near their dwellings. Ants forest insects promote the growth of oaks, pines and other trees.
Ants are industrious insects and are extremely efficient. They can lift twenty times their own weight and travel great distances. Ants– social insects.
It means that social structure they resemble a human. tropical ants differ in a special variety of castes. They have a queen, soldiers, workers and slaves.
Ants and other insects, such as wasps and bees, are not able to live without their community, and die separately from their own kind. An anthill is a single organism, each individual clan of which cannot exist without the others. Each caste of this hierarchy performs a specific function.
The substance secreted by ants, which has the name: "ant alcohol" is a component for medicines for many diseases. Among them are bronchial asthma, diabetes mellitus, rheumatism, tuberculosis and many others. It is also used to prevent hair loss.
Ant feeding
Ants need abundant food, are predators and destroy plant pests. Adult individuals consume carbon food: plant juice, their seeds and nectar, mushrooms, vegetables, fruits, sweets.
The larvae are provided with protein nutrition, which includes insects and invertebrates: mealy worms, aphids, scale insects and others. To do this, worker ants pick up already dead individuals and attack the living.
Human homes are sometimes the perfect place for the dangerous breeding of pharaoh ants. There is a lot of heat and food, in search of which insects are tireless and inventive, overcoming any obstacles.
Finding a power source, they form a whole highway to it, along which they move to large quantities. Often harm ants applied to people's dwellings, gardens and orchards.
Reproduction and lifespan of an ant
There may be one or more queens in the family of these insects. Their mating flight occurs only once, while the collected sperm reserve is enough for the rest of their lives. After the ritual, the female, shedding her wings, becomes the queen. Next, the uterus is looking for a suitable place to lay the testicles.
In forest ants, they are quite large in size, have a milky white color with a transparent shell and an elongated shape. The eggs fertilized by the queen produce females, the rest produce males that live only a few weeks before mating.
Ant larvae go through four stages of development and are similar to worms, almost immobile and fed by worker ants. Subsequently, they turn yellow or white color egg-shaped pupae.
Which caste an individual will come out of them depends entirely on feeding. The presence of ways of reproduction of ants of some species is impressive, for example, females can appear by asexual reproduction.
The lifespan of worker ants is up to three years. The life span of the queen, from the point of view of insects, is huge and sometimes reaches twenty years. Tropical ants show year-round activity, but individuals living in more severe regions are dormant in winter. Most often, larvae enter diapause, and adults simply reduce activity.
Ants are very different from most of the small living creatures that inhabit the earth. On the other hand, there are more than 8,000 species of them and they make up approximately 12% of the mass of all land animals. The question of an ant is an insect or not torments many. They are not only insects, but very ancient, it is possible that their species originated from wasps or bees.
IN everyday life it became customary to call animals simply animals, dividing them into wild and domestic. and fish were divided into separate groups. As a result, the question arises whether the ant is an animal or an insect. On the one hand, he is alive, on the other, small and with six paws.
The ant is the strongest animal in the world
Animals are all living things on earth, with the exception of plants, fungi and viruses. Even a person belongs to this group, which consists of:
- animals;
- birds;
- shellfish;
- amphibians;
- reptiles;
- insects.
Each group has many classes, species, groups, subclasses. They are divided according to:
- habitats;
- respiratory organs;
- the presence and structure of the heart;
- feeding method;
- birth of offspring alive or eggs;
- places for laying eggs;
- stages of development.
An ant is an insect because it has notches on its body, like a wasp, bee, bug, fly. And it also belongs to the type of arthropods, because its paws consist of several segments. This group includes not only insects, but also arachnids, crayfish and crabs. The division goes on:
- order Hymenoptera;
- family - ants.
Ants are insects
So an elephant, a whale, a hummingbird, a bat, and an ant, regardless of size, are animals. Some members of the ant family have retained transparent wings, and fly out once in a lifetime to inseminate and create a new nest.
Crocodile, chicken, ant, moth and bug lay eggs. The hen incubates them and feeds the chicks, teaches them everything. The crocodile burrows into the hot sand and that's it, his mission is over. Both animals have living children from the egg. The bug acts similarly to the crocodile, attaching masonry in a secluded place, forgets about it, and the born nymphs themselves begin to get their own food from the first day.
The ant takes care of its eggs and feeds the larvae. Then pupation occurs and only after that an independent individual appears - an ant. In this state, the insect spends most of its life. In moths, the breeding process is similar, but the butterfly lives less than 2 weeks and most do not even have a mouth. The longest phase of existence of the larva is the voracious worm. And they are all animals of different families and classes.
Ants are unique in creating and caring for a food source. Just as a person provides himself with milk and eggs by raising domestic animals and birds, so an insect is bred and grown aphids, they take care of them, graze and take them to their hole for the winter, for the sake of their juice - fall. From the leaves create a nutrient mixture and grow mushrooms. They feed the larvae of some species of beetles in exchange for secreted enzymes that are edible for ants.
Ants have long history of its development. The first insect whose fossilized skeletons were found by scientists is 80 million years old. Their relatives are:
- termites;
- bees.
It is difficult to classify ants, many types of twins and similar only in appearance. In total, according to various sources, 8 - 12 thousand varieties are counted. Some of the insect families are predators, others feed only on nectar or wood. Insects are colored
- yellow;
- brown;
- red;
- black.
There are mixed ones. Certain types of insects are eaten. But they don't have any meat.
black ant
The smallest ants grow 1 - 2 mm and can be difficult to see. But in warm damp forests tropics, you can find an insect quite large, 50 mm. Between themselves, ants differ in color, head size, waist, and the presence of wings. Otherwise, their structure is the same:
- head;
- breast;
- abdomen;
- paws.
The ant begins with complex multi-membered antennae. They serve him to determine his own and others, to feel food. A wears hard pieces and crushes insect food with strong mandulas. These are peculiar ticks on his head on the sides of the proboscis.
Between the chest and abdomen petiole in the form of a narrow waist. The working ant ends with a sting, into which his genitals have mutated. From above, the insect has a chitinous cover, which is also an exoskeleton. The paws are thin, multi-segmented and end in claws. Thanks to the peculiar hooks, the insect is freely held on vertical rough surfaces. On the head of an ant there are several types of glands that secrete various enzymes. Some serve as an identifying smell for their own, others as a poison that can kill small insects, larvae. For humans, ant stings only in large quantities can cause allergies.
The ant has glands that secrete various enzymes, for example, in case of danger
In case of danger, ants signal by secreting enzymes consisting mainly of oxalic acid. She also smeared the sting of warrior ants. Therefore, if the baseboards are wiped with a swab with oxalic acid, then pharaoh ants will not visit the kitchen for a long time.
The abdomen is a kind of reservoir in which liquid food is stored during its transportation to the nest. Some insects act as containers for storing honeydew and honeydew on winter period. They are in a special place among the pantries. In summer, worker ants pour nectar into them, in winter they eat. Running past, it is enough to touch the head of the tank with the antennae and it will give out a portion of food.
Ants have complex vision. Compound eyes on the sides of the head consist of many lenses. They cover a large viewing radius, but see poorly. Can determine the contours of large objects. The frog, thanks to a similar device of the organs of vision, can see an almost circular panorama around itself. Individual fragments from each pupil add up to her overall picture.
The large eyes of a dragonfly can see in color and detail only what is below it. The upper segments convey a black and white image, but clearly. This is enough to see the danger and fly away in time.
Ants have poor eyesight
Ant poor eyesight. Some who live and eat underground are generally blind. On the top of the muzzle and ants there are 3 more small eyes that can determine the degree of illumination and the density of the light flux. Insects navigate in space thanks to their antennae and sense of smell.
Ants eat only liquid food. They drink honeydew and honeydew, which make up to 60% of their diet. They collect nectar from flowers, extract juices from caterpillars and larvae. Working individuals crush solid food with their mandulas, process and regurgitate larvae.
In insects, the mouth is not adapted to chew food, only to suck. When meeting insects with the help of antennae, they transmit their smell, Tapping each other on the head, they get food.
Ants eat caterpillars and larvae
Leaf beetles crush the leaves with mandulas, then swallow and process. By burping the mixture, they sow mushrooms in it inside the anthill and feed on them.
Ants are social insects; they live in large families numbering hundreds of individuals. Everyone has their own responsibilities. The queen flies out of the nest only once to mate. After that, it gnaws off its wings and lays eggs all its life, on average 10 years. The method of long-term storage of the seed is also observed in bedbugs, females are fertilized once and they make clutches for a year. one mating is enough to lay eggs several times.
Ants live in large families
Males do not live long. They come from underdeveloped eggs and have only one type of chromosome. After mating, they soon die.
The bulk are worker ants. They have, like females, 2 types of chromosomes, but their genitals have degenerated into a sting, so there are no primary signs.
Among the worker ants there are soldiers guarding each entrance to the anthill. They have a large head and strong mandulas. Developed sting with poison. They are stronger and larger than other individuals, in addition to protecting their nest, they are engaged in capturing strangers. Foragers help them with this.
Forager ants prepare food
Foragers are working individuals that feed the whole family, extract and drag food to pantries and other members of the nest, care for larvae, and graze aphids.
Some species have slaves inside the nest. These are adults that have been captured as eggs in other nests of weaker species. They do not go upstairs, they constantly look after the larvae and do other work.
Ants stand out among other insects with their developed mind. Scientists have made some interesting discoveries.
- In finding the shortest way home and the route to food, they use mathematical calculations.
- In all insects, birds, fish, rodents, the process of defecation is not controlled. They leave their feces everywhere. Ants do the same outside. But in the nest they have specially designated places for this, analogues of the toilet.
- Ants transmit information to each other over a distance.
- In search of new places during overpopulation, insects will never occupy an empty nest with dead residents. They understand that it is dangerous, the place is infected with deadly viruses.
- Ants are able to find desired plants and be treated.
There is complete democracy in the family. The female, she is the queen, is the largest and lives several times longer than foragers. But it is the workers, who make up the majority, who decide its fate. If she does not do her job well, they gather, hold a meeting and kill her, laying down several new females.
The small insect Ant is smarter in its way of life and behavior and shows signs of intelligence and culture, more than some large animals. The whole anthill acts as one organism, consisting of hundreds of small fragments. In case of danger, they save the eggs and larvae - the offspring.
Forest ants are social insects that are representatives of Hymenoptera. Forest ants form castes: females, workers and males.
Appearance of forest ants
There are few differences between male and female workers, the main difference being the wings of the females.
The body of a forest ant is divided by a narrow waist. The whole body is covered with a chitinous membrane. On the head are compound eyes of a complex structure.
In addition, there are 3 simple eyes that determine the level of illumination. In addition, there are antennae on the head that are sensitive to vibrations, air currents and chemicals. The upper jaws of wood ants are highly developed, and they use the lower jaws to carry food and build.
Each foot has a hook-shaped claw, these claws help forest ants climb vertical surfaces. At the end of the abdomen is a sting, which is used for protection and food extraction.
Wood ant eggs are quite large. Their shape is elongated, the color is most often white-milky, the shell is translucent. Eggs are arranged in small piles.
Wood ant larvae look like worms. They lead a sedentary lifestyle, so they are fed by worker ants. Larvae have 4 stages of development, after which pupation occurs.
The pupa is shaped like a large egg, white or yellow color. The pupa is also cared for by workers. Whether a queen or a worker ant emerges from the chrysalis depends on nutrition. Also, worker ants help young individuals to get out of pupae.
Reproduction of forest ants
The queen lays her eggs, the unfertilized eggs later produce males, and the fertilized eggs produce females.
The mating flight in females occurs only once in a lifetime, when the female mates, a reserve of sperm is collected in her body, which is consumed throughout life cycle. And female forest ants live for quite a long time 10-20 years.
After the female is fertilized, she gnaws off her own wings, finds a suitable place for the nest, digs a chamber and lays her first eggs in it. Over time, the number of ants increases, and the nest expands.
Feeding wood ants
The diet of forest ants consists of two types of food: protein and carbohydrate. Protein food is used to feed the larvae, and adults consume carbohydrate food.
The protein diet consists of invertebrates and insects. To do this, worker ants collect the corpses of insects or attack the living. The carbohydrate diet consists of secretions of aphids, scale insects, cicadas, mealybugs. In addition, adults feed on seeds, mushrooms, nectar and plant sap.
Wood ants are predatory insects. They eat carrion or live midges, killing them with their poison. Varieties of forest ants. Fire or red ant
These ants are very dangerous view. Fire ants have a stinger with poison, which contains the alkaloid solenopsin. Adult individuals in length do not exceed 2-4 millimeters. On the head of the red ants there are antennae ending in maces.
red ant
One of the most common types of wood ants are red ants. They are quite large in size - 4-9 millimeters. The head and chest of these ants are orange, while the abdomen and back of the head are black.
The red wood ant is one of the most common species. Red ants build huge nests that can reach a height of up to 2 meters. They build anthills from earth and food residues. Female red ants do not leave their nests and do not form separate colonies, they replace the old female,
when she dies.
Black-brown ants
These ants are a common species of wood ants. Working individuals have an average body size of 5-8 millimeters. The color of ants of this species is black and gray.
A distinctive feature of black-brown ants are small families. New females leave the nest and form their own colonies.
The anthills of these forest ants look like low mounds. But most often, black-brown ants make their nests under stones.
The Necessity of Wood Ants
Wood ants secrete a special substance known as "ant alcohol", which is used in modern medicine for the treatment of arthritis, rheumatism, bronchial asthma, hepatitis, tuberculosis, diabetes and kidney failure. Formic alcohol also helps with hair loss.
Forest ants improve the quality of the soil - they loosen it, enrich it with useful substances and saturate it with oxygen. Besides forest ants are food for birds such as tits, woodpeckers, capercaillie and black grouse. Also, forest ants regulate the number of insect pests.
But forest ants also bring harm, for example, they breed and graze aphids, which are pests of many plant species. But for forests, this is not as scary as for vegetable gardens and orchards.
Wood ant stings
During a bite, a wood ant releases formic acid, which is considered poisonous. In small quantities, this poison is not dangerous to humans, most often it provokes only a local reaction: swelling, itching and redness of the skin.
Fire ant stings are not so harmless. If fire ants cause multiple bites, then a general reaction occurs: sweating, dizziness, nausea and pain in chest.
If a person has an allergy, the face and throat swell, hives appear on the skin, the arterial pressure, speech becomes sluggish. In the most dangerous cases, anaphylactic shock or coma occurs. Contact with formic acid in the eyes is also dangerous, because it corrodes the mucous membrane and provokes a chemical burn.
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Today we will tell you Interesting Facts about ants, which will allow you to get to know these insects better. Surely you do not know how much one ant weighs. What do they do during the winter months? And the fact that these little creatures can be useful is known to very few.
Some features of the existence of these insects are more than amazing.
External structure
The family of ants has a fairly large number of species, but all of them are united by the structure of the body. As you know, there are worker ants that constantly leave the nest and scurry about in search of food. These individuals are wingless, regardless of gender, and only females have them during the mating season. After that, the females bite off their wings and become the same as the rest of the worker ants.
The body of these insects is covered with a chitinous shell and has the following structure:
- head;
- prothorax;
- abdomen.
Every separate view ants has its own head structure, on which mandibles are located, designed to carry food, building material and, of course, for protection.
The eyes of these insects are faceted - they consist of several lenses. But not all types of ants are sighted. For example, the ant Dracula has no eyes at all and is completely blind. And those species that have eyes are not able to distinguish objects, but can only recognize movements. Some of the species also respond to the degree of illumination of the space and the polarization of light.
The cranked antennae play the role of sensory organs - with their help, the ant recognizes odors, picks up vibrations and fluctuations in the air, receives and transmits signals in direct contact with other individuals.
On a note! It is characteristic that only ants have such antennae. Other insects are deprived of them.
Some species are "armed" with a sting, which is located at the end of the abdomen. It serves the ants both for protection and for hunting.
Consider paws
With the help of the legs, the ant can not only move, in fact, they are designed for various functions:
- the first pair of paws is equipped with a kind of brushes with which insects clean the antennae and other paws;
- hind legs are equipped with spurs, which are most often used for defense and attack when fighting other ants;
- on all paws there are small notches that allow these insects to move along absolutely smooth and at the same time sheer surfaces;
On a note! Pharaoh ants can easily move on glass, which, for example, black cockroaches are not capable of.
- some species use their legs to swim across water barriers. For example, a bulldog ant is able to overcome a puddle 15 cm wide.
Reproduction features
Now we should consider how ants reproduce. This process is extremely efficient. The fact is that the offspring is produced by one female, which is called the uterus. She is constantly in the nest, laying eggs and caring for them. In addition to her, males are around the future offspring. Part of them is a working force that leaves the nest from time to time to find food; the second part simply "looks after" the eggs, protecting them from enemies. In addition to the uterus, there are other females in the anthill, but they are not able to reproduce and are the same labor force as the males.
Once a year, young females and males emerge from the pupae and can mate. During the mating season, they are winged, but immediately after fertilization, the females leave the nest and try to find a new place to create their anthill. To provide itself with food, the newly-made uterus gnaws off its wings.
Domestic ants behave somewhat differently. Young queens do not organize new nests, but create peculiar "colonies". At the same time, they spread over new territories only after it becomes too crowded in the "native" anthill. After “settlement”, a strong connection is constantly maintained between the main and child nests. You can learn more about the device of the anthill in the article.
Important! For this reason, it becomes quite difficult to breed domestic ants. After all, it is necessary to find all the anthills in order to completely destroy the colony of insects.
In the nests of domestic ants, there are both working individuals and scouts, who treat the former “not with the deepest respect”, but rather perceive them as containers with seed material. While the area of the anthill allows you to accommodate all those present, the queens in it do not show hostility to each other. Although males may even destroy some of them, most often those that lay few eggs.
Ant weight
How much does an ant weigh? The answer to this question will depend solely on the type of insect:
- our "native" red and black ants have a weight of 5 to 7 mg;
- domestic pharaoh ant is the lightest - 1-2 mg;
- the bullet ant is the heaviest and weighs about 90 mg;
- and the mass of the uterus of an African wandering ant can reach 10 g.
But most of all, it is surprising that the total mass of all ants living on the planet is equal to the mass of all mankind, and this is no less than 1,000,000,000 tons! And if you believe the calculations of scientists, then there are 10,000,000 ants per person.
Ant wintering
What do you think ants do in winter? Sleep - many will answer. No, you are wrong. Their life continues to "boil". Solitary species enter a state of diapause when internal organs insects reduce their work, but do not completely stop it.
Ants spend the winter months in the same anthills in which they also have a period of activity. And so that frosty air does not penetrate inside, insects carefully close up the entrances with dry leaves. Sometimes they are lowered into the lower "compartment" of the nest, where a warmer temperature is maintained.
During wintering, ants are inactive and do not feed as often. But if there are larvae in the nest, then adults remain fully active and feed their offspring. In addition, due to temperature fluctuations, the upper layers of the anthill periodically get wet and the ants are constantly forced to transfer food supplies to dry compartments.
On a note! With severe climatic conditions, for example, in the northern regions, ants are able to tolerate especially low temperatures. Thus, in larvae wintering in the Kolyma, a body temperature of -58°C was recorded. This figure is the lowest for insects in general.
Some ant species that do not have diapause are forced to remain active throughout the winter. To survive, they stock up on food during the autumn months, which should last until the thaw. Work force at this time, he is repairing the nest and trying to maintain the microclimate.
The larvae of these ant species require protein food, which is impossible to obtain in winter conditions. Before the arrival of cold weather, they develop to the state of adults and then go to winter. And with the onset of spring, when access to protein food opens up, the uterus begins to produce new offspring.
Benefits of small insects
Do you know how useful ants are? In fact, these tiny insects perform many of the most difficult ecological functions and are able to provide an invaluable service to humans.
For nature
- Take an active part in regulating the quantity harmful insects simply by eating their larvae.
Interesting fact! In just one season, thanks to one anthill, from 100,000 to 1,000,000 insect pests are destroyed.
- Facilitate the spread of plants. As you know, ants constantly carry food for the uterus and most often plant seeds act in this role. But far from all the “catch” the workers manage to drag to the nest. And the lost part simply sprouts.
- Help flowers in pollination. Ants are sweet-toothed who like to enjoy nectar, and as a result, they carry pollen from one flower to another on their paws.
- Increase soil fertility. Laying underground passages, insects loosen the earth, saturate it with oxygen and enrich it. organic compounds and minerals.
Now you understand why ants are considered the orderlies of the forest.
