ANT SIMULATOR
INTERACTIVE | EDUCATION | RESEARCH
Ant Species
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Ants have existed since 110 to 130 million years ago after evolving from their ancestors. There are an estimated 22,000 classified species of ants currently in the world.
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Ants form colonies that range in size from a few dozen individuals living in small natural cavities to highly organized colonies that may occupy large territories and consist of millions of individuals. These colonies are described as superorganisms because the ants appear to operate as a unified entity, collectively working together to support the colony.
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In Ant Simulator, two species of ants are currently supported: the Carpenter ant, and the Leafcutter ant.
Carpenter Ant (Camponotus spp.)
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Appearance
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Workers: 1/4" long.
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Queen: 1/2" long.
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Blackish color most common, can also be black and red.
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6 legs.
Life cycle
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Takes 3 - 6 years to establish a large and stable colony.
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Estimated to be 6 - 12 weeks from egg to adult.
Habits
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Locations - both moist and dry wood, but prefer moist, e.g. wood dampened by water leaks.
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Internally - excavate galleries in wood with a smooth appearance.
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Externally - sometimes hollow out sections of trees.
Visibility - hunt for food mainly at night but also during the day in early spring / summer. Signs include sawdust, wet wood, or unusual noises coming from the walls.
Feeding - primary food is honeydew, also eat plant secretions, fruit juices and insect remains. They do not eat wood. In homes they are attracted to sweet substances, fats, grease and meats.
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Contact - rarely come into contact with people, but if they do will try to escape. They cannot sting.The black carpenter ant, Camponotus pennsylvanicus, is one of the largest and friendliest ants. Because of their size and pleasant disposition, they make excellent ambassadors between the ant and human world.
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You can identify black carpenter ants by looking at their size (BIG) and the light dusting of golden hairs on their head, thorax and abdomen. Unlike some ant species, black carpenter ant workers vary in size and shape within the colony. Colonies have between about 350 to almost 2,000 workers.
They’re called carpenter ants because they are particularly good at woodworking. They like to nest in living, standing trees using their sturdy mandibles to excavate tunnels and rooms in the wood. Many people see black carpenter ants living in their trees and think the ants are killing the trees. However, black carpenter ants actually have a history of helping trees. They have an appetite for tree pests like red oak borers, and they spend a lot of their time foraging around their home, plucking pests off the bark.
Because of these woodworking skills, some people think carpenter ants are pests. While black carpenter ants can make their tunnels in the wood of people’s homes, they often point homeowners to bigger problems: damp and rotting wood from a leak or drip or other pests living in that wood. When wood becomes soaked through, carpenter ants can easily use their jaws to snap away and build their tunnels. If homeowners keep their wood dry, carpenter ants will usually stick to the trees. That is, unless the homeowners have pests like termites or wood beetles snacking away inside their walls. Carpenter ants are mostly night owls, foraging from dusk until dawn. Black carpenter ants have pretty good vision for ants, using that vision to help them take shortcuts from their house to food in the early morning and when the moon is out.
Leaf-cutter ant (Atta and Acromyrmex spp.)
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Appearance
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Worker ants are typically 8-12mm. Light brown/orange, with spikes on their backs.
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Major workers are 18mm. Brown, spikes on back, large head.
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Largest major workers can weigh several 100 times more than the smallest minor workers.
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Queen ants are typically 30mm length, they are dull brown, very chubby, and are monogyn (one queen per colony).
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Blackish color most common but can also be black and red.
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6 legs.
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Has sharp powerful mandibles used for cutting through thick vegetation
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Life cycle - Can contain up to 5 million members. The colony has one queen that can live more than 15 years, and comprises different castes, known as 'task partitioning', and each caste has a different job to do.​
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Habits - highly specialised to live in forest gaps, and colonies are most often found on farms and plantations, in rainforests, and in forest patches (usually mature or old-growth forest); also lives across the rainforest floor they occupy an area typically an area of approximately 20 feet.
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They live in nests that can be as deep as 7 metres that they have carefully positioned so that a breeze can rid the nest of the dangerous levels of CO2 given off by the fungus they farm and eat.
Colonies of this leaf-cutter ant species contain millions of individuals, making it possibly the most dominant invertebrate in Central and South America. A colony is made up of different classes of ant, known as castes, including the queen, workers, and at certain times, males and females (queens) that are capable of reproduction. Each individual within the colony carries out a specific job depending on its size and caste, in a behavior known as ‘task partitioning’. As in all ant species, individuals in the worker caste of the leaf-cutter ant are wingless, sterile females of different sizes, depending on the role played within the colony. ‘Soldiers’ act to protect the colony and are the largest in the worker caste. A nest of the leaf-cutter ant will also contain tiny ‘minima’ workers, which work inside the colony and in the fungus garden, and ‘media’ and ‘maxima’ workers, larger ants with powerful jaws, which cut and transport leaf fragments back to the nest. Males are bigger than the workers, whilst the queens are larger still. Within a colony, only the males and the new queens will develop wings and are able to mate.
The leaf-cutter ant lives in huge underground nests, connected by a series of tunnels. The ants cultivate a special ‘fungus garden’ deep within the nest, and are almost entirely dependent on the fungus for food. Maintaining the garden is crucial to the survival of the colony, and worker ants perform a variety of tasks, including foraging for leaves, cutting them into suitably sized fragments, transporting leaf fragments back to the colony, and preparing a ‘mulch’ (made from the leaves), which is used to cultivate the fungus garden. Some of the smaller ants ‘hitchhike’ on leaves carried back to the colony, and are thought to protect the foraging ants from parasitic flies (Phoridae), and may also play a part in leaf preparation. It is essential that the fungus garden remains free of parasites that could cause disease, which would be devastating to the leaf-cutter ant colony. Microorganisms that have the potential to be harmful to the fungus are removed by some of the smaller garden workers as waste, which is taken to a separate waste chamber, reducing the chance that the fungus, or other ants in the colony, will become infected by harmful pathogens.
In a colony, only the queen is able to produce offspring. The queen is capable of laying thousands of eggs per day, most of which are destined to become workers, with only a small number of these developing into males and females capable of reproduction. At the beginning of the rainy season, fertile individuals leave the nest to take part in a ‘nuptial flight’, a single flight during which mating occurs, and after which the males die. This is the only time that the females mate, and the potential queens are capable of storing several hundred million sperm, which are used to fertilize the eggs in a future colony. A new colony is created by a solitary female queen, who will dig a tunnel, and, using a tiny piece of fungus brought from the old nest inside a special cavity in the mouth, will start to cultivate a new fungus garden and begin egg laying. Despite the large numbers of leaf-cutter ant queens that attempt to establish a colony, very few actually survive, with the probability that the founding queen will die before eggs hatch and the fungus garden becomes established estimated at nearly 90 percent.