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I just traversed the ant part of Wikipedia, and this is what I found. > Queen ants have one of the longest life-spans of any known insect – up to 30 years. >
by widforss 8y ago
I just traversed the ant part of Wikipedia, and this is what I found.
> Queen ants have one of the longest life-spans of any known insect – up to 30 years.
> The fertile eggs become female worker ants and unfertilized eggs develop as males; if the fertilized eggs and pupae are well-nurtured, they potentially become queens.
> males are "quickly converted to sexual missiles."
> the queens often try to escape the males, allowing only the fastest and the fittest males to mate. Mating takes place during flight.
> One queen usually mates with several males. The sperm is stored in a special organ, known as a spermatheca, in the queen's abdomen, and lasts throughout her lifetime. This can be as long as 20 years, during which time the sperm can be used to fertilize tens of millions of eggs.
> The males have evolved for the single purpose of inseminating the queen.[3] During "the quick and violent mating," the male literally explodes his internal genitalia into the genital chamber of the queen and quickly dies.
And, moving on to army ants.
> A nest is constructed out of the living ant workers' own bodies to protect the queen and larvae, and is later deconstructed as the ants move on.
> As many as 150,000 to 700,000 worker bodies cover and protect the queen, linking legs and bodies in a mass that measures a meter across.
> In the morning, the bivouac dissolves into raiding columns that form a fan-shaped front. These raiding columns can travel up to 20 metres per hour with lead workers laying a chemical trail for other workers to follow. Smaller workers lead the column, while larger, formidable soldiers protect the flanks.
> When the queens emerge, the workers in the colony will form two 'systems' or arms in opposite directions. These queens that are hatched will move down either the arms and only two queens will succeed, one for each branch. The remaining new queens will be left in the middle and are abandoned to die.
> The whole colony of army ants can consume up to 500,000 prey animals each day, so can have a significant influence on the population, diversity, and behavior of their prey. [...] About five species hunt in higher trees, where they can attack birds and their eggs, although they focus on hunting other social insects along with their eggs and larvae.
- thenaturalist 8y agoAnts really do provide a peek into the diversity of evolution and often how little we know about the world around us. I buried the dream of becoming a myrmecologist myself, but there is so much fascinating stuff to share. Ants can dive [0] and swim [1], and in mangrove forests adapted to survive extended periods with low O2 during flooding [2]. Some species have established ritual fights to solve territorial conflict [3] and while they are known to be fiercely territorial, there are species who defy the rule and fuse nests after intense fighting [4], or form mega colonies without hostility to strangers across globes - one of these mega colonies being located along the coast of California [5]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_schmitzi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_schmitzi 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJw5hBB8-Os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJw5hBB8-Os 2: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1440-6055.2003.00372.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1440-6055.... 3: https://myrmecos.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/question-ritualized-fighting-in-harvester-ants/ https://myrmecos.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/question-ritualize... 4: https://phys.org/news/2016-03-mortal-enemies-allies-ants.html https://phys.org/news/2016-03-mortal-enemies-allies-ants.htm... 5: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/8127519.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/812...
- kevinventullo 8y ago>> The fertile eggs become female worker ants and unfertilized eggs develop as males One interesting consequence of this is that male ants have no fathers. All of their genetic code is inherited from their mother, and there is no variation in what they pass on. This lack of variation in what fathers pass on means that two ant sisters share 75% of their chromosomes instead of the 50% you see in most other animals, which some researchers believe is the underlying cause for the high level of cooperation in ant species (eusociality). More reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy
- BurningFrog 8y agoYou can also, if you're in a certain quirky intellectual mood, think of an ant colony as a single organism, since all the ants in it have 75% identical DNA. Its body just happens to be physically disjoint.
- Scene_Cast2 8y agoDoes collaborative behavior play a role then? For example, I would not consider a herd of cloned sheep to be one organism. Let's call it a grey spectrum then?
- wahern 8y agoWhich came first, the chicken or the egg? Your analogy only works if you somehow engineered the sheep to reproduce like ants and waited for many successive generations. If the reproductive change stuck, the behavior of the sheep would presumably evolve in a way that they began behaving like a single organism, including individual sheep exhibiting extremely self-less behavior, such as how individual ants from a colony or individual cells from your body behave.
- iguy 8y agoExactly. Cloned sheep are still sheep, optimised by for a life in which they have no clones. Whereas ants are instead optimised for this colony life. As are leaves of a tree, for instance, who are 100% willing to sacrifice themselves.
- Guest10928391 8y agoIf you want to become addicted to ants, you need to visit the Ants Canada YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcw6_4p9uGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcw6_4p9uGw I went down the rabbit hole one day and watched a few videos. It's a YouTube channel about ants, with 4K video and 2.5 million subscribers. When you watch a video, you'll know why.