ANTS ANTS ANTS Kingdom:Animalia - PowerPoint Presentation

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ANTS ANTS ANTS

Kingdom:AnimaliaPhylum:ArthropodaClass: InsectaOrder HymenopteraFamily:Formicidae

“Bugs aren’t going to inherit the earth, they own it.” Thomas Edison

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Ants are

Arthropods of the order Hymenoptera which includes sawflies, bees, and wasps. They have three body parts (head, thorax, abdomen), 6 jointed legs attached to the thorax, a pair of antennae, and an exoskeleton (hard external covering that protects the body and is a point of attachment for muscles). The abdomen contains the heart and two stomachs, one to hold food for them and one to share food with others by spitting it up. The mandible is used for digging, carrying, and building nests. Other mouthparts are used for chewing food and they have a tongue for sucking up liquids.

They may have stingers or spray poison. Some ants can swim.

They don’t have lungs; oxygen and other gases pass through the exoskeleton via tiny valves called spiracles.

The antennae are bent (elbow antenna) and used to smell. Their two compound eyes allow them to only see things close up. Some ants have no eyes. Clawed feet let them climb trees or walk on the underside of leaves.Ants hear with their legs, thorax, head, and antenna by feeling vibrations in the ground. The front part of the abdomen is the petiole that lets the ant bend and twist through underground tunnels.

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An ant preserved in amber 8 million years old

There are over 12,000 species of ants. There are 580 species in the United States. Ants are the longest living of all insects – living up to 30 years. They live on every continent except Antarctica, but are mostly found where it is warm. The ants worst enemies are other ants. Ants form a complex social society with special functions. They may be the only group apart from mammals where interactive teaching has been observed. They are beneficial for the suppression of pest populations and the aeration of soil. Ants move an estimated 50 tons of soil per year in 1 square mile.

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ANT

TERMITE

Ants and termites are so small they are sometimes difficult to distinguish. Note the differences in the wings and body shape

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Ant Hill

Ant nests may be protected from threats by elaborate architecture. The largest colony was over 3750 miles wide. Ants may form subterranean nests or build them on trees. Some species are nomadic and do not build permanent structures. Nests may be found in the ground, under stones or logs, inside logs, hollow stems, or even acorns. Soil and plant matter are used to build nests at a carefully selected site. Some species build nests in and on buildings, interior spaces in walls, windows, and even appliances like clocks, lamps, and radios!

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An Ant Mound

Ant colonies can be long-lived. Queens can live up to 30 years, workers live 1-3 years and males live only a few weeks. Colonies are described as super-organisms because ants operate as a unified entity, collectively working together to support the colony. Ants are clean and tidy insects. Some worker ants are given the job of taking the rubbish from the nest and putting it outside in a special rubbish dump!

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Underground Ant Colony

This is what an ant colony looks like!This is an aluminum cast of an underground ant colony created by American entomologist and retired biology professor Walter R. Tschinkel.Worker ants move the eggs and larvae deep into the nest at night to protect them from the cold. In the daytime they move eggs and larvae to the top of the nest so they can be warmer.

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Carpenter Ants

Carpenter ants reside indoors and outside in moist decaying or hollow wood. They cut galleries into the wood grain to make passageways for movement from section to section of the nest. The tunneling systems often exist in trees.

They do not eat wood but create tunnels and nests in the wood. They are foragers and collect and consume dead insects. Carpenter ant galleries are smooth and very different from termite damaged areas which have mud packed into the hollowed-out areas. The ants are usually large (1/4 to ½ inch) and blackish.

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Small Ant larvae and larger Pupae

Ants go through complete metamorphosis: egg-larva-pupa-adult. Eggs take about a week to hatch. If an egg is fertilized, progeny will be female; if not it will be male. Larvae are mostly immobile and cared for by Some species are asexual and clone themselves and one species is known to be all female. Worker, soldier, and queen ants are female. Reproductive females lose their wings after mating flights to start a colony. A workers job is foraging, cleaning, and protection.

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Cecropia Ants

Azteca alfari Cecropia ants guard their tree zealously against intruders. Working together, they surround and immobilize their opponents such as this trap-jaw ant by pinning down their appendages.

Gamboa, Panama

"The worst enemies of ants are often other ants," writes entomologist-cum-photographer Alex Wild. And what brutally savage enemies they are.

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Fire Ants

Fire ants are very small and sting repeatedly and don’t have natural predators or diseases. In the U.S. their population is out of control. Fire ants cause an estimated $5 billion worth of damage in North America per year.

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Fire Ant Stings

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Army Ants Bridge Building

Army Ants are nomadic and always moving. They carry their larvae and their eggs with them in a long column. They kill and eat anything in their way, digesting it even as they tear it apart! Most of the time, if the queen passes away, the colony will most likely die too. When a colony loses its queen, the worker ants may fuse with another colony that has a queen in a few days.

Army ants build a living nest with their bodies, known as a bivouac. Bivouacs tend to be found in tree trunks or in burrows dug by the ants. The members of the bivouac hold onto each other's legs and so build a sort of ball, which may look unstructured to a layman's eyes, but is actually a well-organized structure.

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Army Ant Scavengers

Army ants are the most ferocious social hunters. Each colony will be formed of millions of individuals all descendant form a single queen.

The name army ant is due to their aggressive predatory foraging groups, known as "raids", in which huge numbers of ants forage simultaneously over a certain area.

Once while visiting Costa Rica, we returned to our cabin in the mountains to find it completely covered in army ants. All we could do was wait until they all left.

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Winged and wingless queen

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The ant is one of the worlds’ strongest creatures in relation to its size. Ants are capable of not only lifting and carrying up to 50x their own body weight. Some ants can support up to 100x their own weight upside down on glass.

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Honey Pot Ant

Honey pot ants, called repletes

, use their own bodies as living storage. Some store liquids, body fat, and water from insect prey brought to them by worker ants. Their abdomens can expand to the size of a grape!

They serve as a food source for fellow ants when food is scarce. When the liquid stored inside a honey pot ant is needed, worker ants stroke the antennae of the honey pot ant causing them to regurgitate the stored liquid.

The stretched skin cannot contract again; thus repletes cannot return to a normal existence and will probably die when their supply is exhausted. A few species are known to change colors. Some common colors are green, red, orange, yellow, and blue.

Native people of Australia have long regard honey pot Ants as a welcomed dessert.

They are found in hot dry areas such as the edges of desert regions of Australia, Africa or North America

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Honey Pot Ants eating a colored sugar mixture

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Citronella Ants

Citronella ants are yellow and

releases alarm pheromones with a "lemony" or citronella smell when they are disturbed. The ants are drawn to aphids, feeding on the sweet sticky substance the aphids leave behind.

They have been known to invade homes, but are nothing more than an irritant. They never cause structural damage or infest food products.

Some species, referred to in the United States as "moisture ants", make nests in and around rotting wood. They are not considered a structural threat because they only make galleries in wood that is already decayed.

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Gliding Ant of the Rainforest

Most ants travel by walking. Some species are capable of leaping or gliding. The glider ants are arboreal ants able to control the direction of their descent when falling from a tree. They are

found living in the rainforest. If the ant falls off the branch of the tree, it glides downward like a parachute to descend back to the tree from which it fell. The ant places itself in a J-shape as it falls. It has a flattened head which it uses with its hind legs and abdomen in a manner pointed in the direction where it plans to land. The ant flips itself upside down and lands on the tree with its head facing towards the ground. The ant then climbs back up the tree to the safety of the canopy.

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The Harvester Ant

The harvester ant has the sting equivalent to 12 honey bees. Ants and humans are the only animals that farm other creatures.

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Leaf Cutter Ants

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Leafcutter Ants

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Bullet Ants/Paraponera

Bullet ants, located in Central and South America, are considered to have the most painful sting of any insect, although it is usually not fatal to humans. It is called "24 hour ant" referring to the 24 hours of pain that follows a sting.

The pain caused by this sting is ranked as the most painful in the Schmidt Sting Pain Index,

above the tarantula and hawk wasp.

It causes waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours. Colonies consist of several hundred individuals and are usually situated at the bases of trees. Workers forage in the tree above the nest for small arthropods and nectar. Nectar, is the most common food taken back to the nest.

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Trap jaws

Trap-jaw ants of the genus Odontomachus

are equipped with mandibles called trap-jaws, which snap shut faster than any other predatory appendages within the animal kingdom.

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Harpegnathos

saltator

This species is found in India. They have long mandibles and have the ability to leap a few inches. These leaps are made not only to escape, but also to catch flying prey. Bites, and stings are severe. It makes its nest under ground, generally about the roots of some plant. Its society does not consist of many individuals. It appears to feed on insects. The nest entrance is usually a low mound on the ground with the entrance surrounded by twigs and leaves.

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Male Bulldog Ant

The Australian bulldog ants also known as jumper ants are among the largest of ants. They have excellent vision, very large strong jaws that open and shut sideways like scissors. They swallow juice they squeeze from food. They have 2 strong pincers to carry food, dig, and defend. Inside the mouth is a pocket to store food. If the bulldog ant is cut in half a battle begins between the head and tail. The head seizes the tail in it’s teeth and the tail defends itself by stinging the head. The battle may last half an hour till they die. The bulldog ants are famous for their aggressive behavior and powerful stings. Their sting can be fatal.

Ultraviolet vision was first discovered in ants. Ant eyes are good for acute movement detection, but not a high resolution image. They have 3 small

ocelli

on the top of the head. Most ants have poor to mediocre eyesight. A few subterranean species are completely blind.

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Jack Jumper Ants

This ant is a species of bull ant native to Australia and

is most common in moist open forest and rainforest edges They are black or red and black and may have yellow or orange legs, antennae, and mandibles. Nests may be hidden under a rock or formed from a mound of fine gravel. They are highly territorial and highly aggressive towards intruders. Workers are solitary when they forage. They are carnivores and scavengers. They sting their victims with a venom that is one of the most powerful in the world. The symptoms of the stings are similar to that of fire ants. They have large eyes and excellent vision.

They are the kangaroos of the ant world! Smaller species can move very quickly by jumping and are called jumper ants. Generally the larger less mobile species are called bull ants.

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Red Velvet Ant

These insects are wasps, not ants. The red velvet ant is the largest of the velvet-ant species (3/4 inch). They are known for their extremely painful stings. Velvet ants may be black, white, silver, or gold. Their exoskeleton is unusually tough. Males have wings but females are wingless. Only the females are able to sting and the stingers are unusually long and maneuverable. It is said that the sting is so painful that it could kill a cow. They feed on nectar. Some species are strictly nocturnal, however females are often active during the day. They occur worldwide, but especially common in desert and sandy areas.

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Weaver Ants

Weaver ants are arboreal and have a unique nest building behavior. Workers weave together leaves using larval silk. Weaver ants prey on small insects and supplement their diet with carbohydrate-rich honeydew excreted by small insects. The ants vary in color from reddish to yellowish brown dependent on the species. Although

Oecophylla weaver ants lack a functional sting they can inflict painful bites and often spray formic acid directly at the bite wound resulting in intense discomfort.

Colonies can be extremely large consisting of more than a hundred nests spanning numerous trees and contain more than half a million workers.

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Weaver Ant Nest in Mango Tree

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The Ghost Ant

The ghost ant is named because the legs and abdomen of the insect look transparent, with only the head and thorax being dark brown in color. Their diet consists mainly of sweets. They exhibit a high need for moisture and

can readily "set up camp" inside domestic houses during dry conditions. This is a widespread tropical species, found throughout the world and

especially a household pest in Florida.

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Strobe Ant

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Tailor Ant

Oecophylla longinoda, the tailor ant, is fiercely territorial. Here they have pinned down a Polyrhachis intruder that has stumbled onto their tree. St. Lucia, South Africa

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Miscellaneous ants

Citronella ant

Thief ant

Pharaoh ant

Moisture ant

Carpenter ant

Acrobat ant

Pavement ant

Field ant

Odorous ant

Harvester ant

Big headed ant

Fire ant

Argentine ant

Ghost ant

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Ant Jokes

What do you call an ant who develops unusual super powers because of variant DNA? A mut

-ant!

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How many ants are needed to fill an apartment? Tenants

What do you call an ant who likes to be alone? IndependentWhat is the biggest ant in the world? ElephantWhat ant is even bigger than that? GiantWhat do you call a 100 year old ant? AntiqueWhat game do ants play with elephants? SquashWhy don't anteaters get sick? Because they are full of antibodiesWhat do you call an ant from overseas? ImportantWhat do you call an ant with frogs legs? AntphibianWhat do you call an ant who

sluffs school? TruantWhat kind of ant is good at adding things up? AccountantWhat did Pink Panther say when he stepped on an ant? Dead Ant

What do you call an ant with five pairs of eyes?

Antteneye! What kind of ants are very learned? Pedants! What do you call a smart ant? Elegant! What do you call an ant who can't play the piano? Discordant! What kind of ant is good at maths? An accountant! Where do ants go for their holidays? Frants! What do you call an ant who skips school? A truant! What do you get if you cross some ants with some tics? All sorts of antics!

What do you call an ant in space?

Cosmonants

&

Astronants

!

What do you call a greedy ant? An anteater

What route did the early pioneer ant take west? The Pheromone Trail

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What medicine would you give an ill ant? Antibiotics!

What is smaller than an ant's dinner? An ant's mouth! What do you call an ant who lives with your great uncle? Your great-ant! Who was the most famous ant scientist? Albert Antstein! What games to ants play with elephants? Squash! What do you call a 100 year old ant? An antique! What kind of ant can you colour with? A crayant!

What do you call an ant who likes to be alone? An independant Who is the most famous French ant?

Napoleant

! Why did the ant-elope? Nobody gnu! Where do ants go to eat? At a restaurant! What do you call an ant who changes his story? Inconsist-ant!What do you call a young female ant from an aristocratic family? A debut-ant!What do you call an ant that fights cancer? An antioxid-ant!What do you call an ant who squeals to the cops? An inform-ant!What do you call an ant who litters? A pollut

-ant!

What do you call an ant that can see the future?

Clairvoy

-ant!

What do you call an ant who skips school? A truant!

What do you get if you cross some ants with some tics? All sorts of antics!