Ants: Life of a Colony

Summary: How do ants create new colonies? Join Kiersten to find out the amazing way new ant colonies are born!

 

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

 

Show Notes: 

“Tales from the Ant World” by Edward O. Wilson

“Ant Biology” Ants Canada, https://www.antscanada.com

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

 

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

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Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

On to episode two of ants, listeners! The second thing I like about ants is the life of a colony. I had no idea how complicated the life a colony was when I started researching this topic. Each species of ant will have specifics that differ based on how they obtain resources and where they choose to live, but the basic structure of the life cycle of a colony is essentially the same for all ants.

It all begins with a virgin queen. When a colony reaches a certain size, and that size varies with each species, the current queen will lay an egg, or several, that will develop into a new young queen. She will develop wings, and as soon as she is able, will take flight from the existing colony. Her first flight is also her nuptial flight. She will emerge form the colony structure and alight on a leaf or rock and release a pheromone that says “Hello! Here I am!” And the males will come flying. Typically they want to mate with males of a different colony, but when males are scarce they will mate with males of their own colony. Diverse genetics is not something most insects have to worry about like mammals must. Depending on the species, the queen will mate with one or multiple males. Regardless, the queen will mate only once in her life.

Sometimes mating takes place in the air and sometimes it takes place on that leaf or rock. Either way, they will each go their separate ways once the deed is done. The queen will wonder off looking for the perfect place to start her new life while the male, having completed the only thing he was born to do, will die or become food for a predator. Sorry, gentleman.

For the new queen, no longer a virgin but with a spermatheca full of sperm (a quick aside: a spermatheca is a pouch in the abdomen where queen ants store the sperm obtained during mating) she follows her instincts to find the best home for her new colony. Based on species it could be a rotten log, a perfect dirt mound, a tree branch, or any number of other places. If she survives the nuptial flight, and that is a big IF, and she finds the perfect colony-building site, another big IF, she will break off her wings and settle in to begin pumping out eggs. 

It can take a queen anywhere from 24 hours to a week to lay eggs. The first eggs laid will be the first workers in the colony, so…they will be female. That’s right! It’s a woman’s world in the ant universe. Disney Pixar’s A Bug’s Life  is wrong, it would have been a female ant that saved the day while the males just laid around doing nothing! All working ants in a colony are female. And here comes the harsh truth about the males: According to E. O. Wilson, one of the foremost authorities on ants in the world, quote “Adult males, with the exception of competing for access to virgin queens, and the food and grooming they receive from their sister workers, are pathetic creatures.” End quote. Males have small brains and big genitalia. They are only necessary during the nuptial flight and mating success is not guaranteed, only death is guaranteed. Once again, gentleman, I’m sorry, but it is a pampered life of eating and eating until it’s time to go have some intimate time with a queen, so maybe it’s not so bad, even if it is a short, short existence. 

Let’s say our queen has been successful and she is on her way to creating her colony. Eggs have been laid, once they hatch she will clean and feed them as larva until they become pupa and then turn into adult ants. These ants will be workers, probably a combination of some minors, that will stay in the nest to care for the queen and more eggs, and some majors that will exit the colony in search of food and water. Once we are at this stage, the queen just keeps going. She will lay the eggs and the worker ants will keep the colony running. The various tasks performed by the worker ants varies by species, but you will typically have indoor and outdoor workers. In some species age determines your job. Young, new workers remain in the colony taking care of the queen and the eggs, larvae, and pupae, while the older ants will venture outside to hunt for resources. We will look at a few specific species of ants in future episodes.

The queen is able to decide when to make females and when to make males. How does she do this? Remember that spermatheca? This pouch in her abdomen is attached to her oviduct by a tube that has a valve. The queen is able to open and close that valve at will. When she wants a fertilized egg, she opens the valve. When she wants an unfertilized egg, she lays an egg without opening the valve. Fertilized eggs will become females while unfertilized eggs become males. 

Let’s take a quick moment to think about this, the queen only mates once in her lifetime and she can lay thousands, maybe millions depending soon how long she lives, of eggs in her life, so it must be a lot of sperm transferred in that nuptial meeting. It’s amazing that one moment of contact gives her what she needs to produce an entire colony. 

How long can a queen live? That varies greatly depending on the species. Some will live only 2 to 3 years while some can live 15 years. The oldest known queen was kept by a German scientist for 29 years. 

Ants go through a complete metamorphosis. This means they go through four stages of growth, the egg, the larva (where they are fed by adult ants), the pupa (this a more dormant stage where they are changing into the adult), and the adult. The egg, larva, and pupa stage are cared for by adult workers making sure they are clean, fed, and moved/rescued should something happen to the colony. 

When workers get older, they do not get to retire to a life of luxury, they usual just die on their feet. Other workers will pick them up and take them to the “trash pile” and leave them to desiccate. Sometimes, when needed, they will be dismembered and eaten. If you die outside the nest you may be brought back as a food resource or left to be scavenged by predators. Not much crying over the loss of a sister in an ant colony. 

When the colony reaches a certain size, the queen will lay eggs that become fertile females, up until then she is the only fertile female in the colony. When these fertile females hatch they will venture forth to begin the colony-building process a new.

Thank you for listening to episode two of ants, listeners, I hope you see why my second favorite thing about ants is the life of a colony, because what a fascinating journey this episode has been!

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about ants.  

    

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.