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Multiple Questions About Ants

Hello Consult-ant,

Thank goodness I’ve managed to stumble on this site; the information on other websites don’t quite provide the information I’m looking for. I think I may have a rather large amount of questions because I find ants just fascinating. Although, I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to ask these many questions, so sorry for the inconvenience. If it is inconvenient (which I highly think it is), then are there any books on ants that you’d recommend I can read from? And please, by all means, answer as conveniently as possible for you such as answering a few questions at a time. Any way would be appreciated. So, to my questions:

1)      I’m interested in the ant’s digestion process and its role in the colony. I’ve read that some ants, the fully mature ones that is, can’t digest solid food due to their narrow waists. So is it true that the ants would take the solid food back to the colony and give them to their larvae where, there, it is digested and converted into a liquid form? I’m guessing that the larvae have the enzymes to digest the solid food. But does this process apply to ALL ants in terms of species?

Edit: Answer Post about ant digestion

2)      I’ve noticed that ants carry pick up their dead and move them. I’ve learned that they do this to basically ‘take out the trash’ for sanitary purposes. But I’ve also noticed that these ants also carry their dead when they’re far away from any ant hole. So, referring to my other question, if it’s true that ants do take the solid food back to their larvae, then are these ants carrying their dead back to their larvae for consumption? Assuming ants are cannibalistic,which I’m not sure of.

Edit: See post about ant undertakers

3)      I’ve been meaning to catch an ant queen, but I’ve been curious about other methods of catching one. Are there ant pheromones that can basically attract queen ants to come out of the colony? I assume that each ant species would probably have their own type of pheromones, so I’ll have to find out which species I’m planning to catch, which leads me to the next question: Where can I get these pheromones? Can I synthetically make them on my own? What differentiates certain pheromones from another? Subtleties in molecular structure?

Edit:  see post about ant queen pheromones

4)      Besides making trails and setting alarms, are there any other kinds of unique pheromones? Such as, attracting the queen ant or inducing certain behaviors like digging.

See 5.

5)      The ant uses their antennae to pick up ant pheromones, so if that’s the case, then do ants necessarily ‘smell’ food if the pheromone is blown towards the ant’s way? Essentially speaking, can ants smell their way to food?

Edit: I combined questions 4 and 5 in a post about ant pheromones.

6)      So ants have pheromones they lay to provide trails to sources of food, but I’ve read somewhere that ants have memory. Can you explain more about that? A ‘leader’ ant would teach a ‘follower’ ant towards a food source. Is that true? with only certain species?

Edit: Hey, I remembered to answer this question.

7)      I’ve read a little about trophallaxis (I hope I spelled that right, because Microsoft Word does not help in scientific terminology), but I don’t see ants perform trophallaxis much. I was observing pavement ants though, so perhaps it has to do with the species. But my question is, do they perform it more underground, as in their colony? Or is it all because these ants weren’t hungry at the time? And what does an ant have to do induce another ant to perform trophallaxis? Some kind of touch communication by antennae?

Edit:  Ant trophallaxis is now posted.

8)      If I were to catch a queen ant, would it be recommended to feed her some protein as well as sugary foods like honey? I was thinking about this because I’ve read that the eggs and larvae would need protein to grow properly (I’m guessing for muscle development and such). So is peanut butter a good protein choice, in substitute of other insects? I’m worried that peanut butter wouldn’t have all the essential amino acids because peanut butter is an incomplete protein. But I’m not sure about ant development and physiology, so I’m curious.

Edit: See Feeding Ant Queens

9)      Ants(obviously) eat other insects, and I probably lack observation skills but do the ants also eat the exoskeleton also? Do they (or the larvae) have some way of digesting chitin? I did see that the ants pretty much leave MOST of the exoskeleton intact, and go for soft parts.

Edit: Can ants digest chitin?

10)  If the eggs, larvae, and pupae were placed in bad conditions, specifically temperature, for a short period of time, would they be harmed?

Edit:  Effects of heat and cold on ant larvae

11)  Are there some ant species that simply drink water and then other species that absorb it from the humidity of the air? Or do they all do both?

Edit: Ants do drink water.

12)  I’m going to be feeding my ants probably some form of sugary food, like honey. But I’m wondering if it is also good to mix the honey with some vitamin and mineral supplement. Are there any substances in typical dietary supplements that ants should not eat?

Edit: See Feeding Ant Queens

13)  If a colony with only one queen ant were to die, would she be replaced with another?Or does the colony die out. If she gets replaced, then are there always alates available to replace her at any time? Or are they only produced prior for the mating season, nuptial flight, and etc.? Is there any way of the colony knowing that the queen is about to expire, like some kind of special pheromone?

Edit:  And we finish with replacing ant queens.

Wow. I do have a little bit more questions. But, I think I’ve consumed A LOT of your time. I think I’ll stop for now. I truly appreciate your time thus far. As you can see though, I am VERY curious about ants, especially social creatures like termites or even dolphins. I’d also like to apologize if some of my questions were already answered elsewhere. So thank you again for your time.

Extremely big thanks,

Mike

Dear Mike,

You have asked a good number of questions. Rather than trying to tackle each on of them here, which would make a very long post, I’m going to answer each question in a separate post and then link them here as they go up. That might make it easier.

As for books, I’ve put a widget in the left sidebar of some popular ant books. I particularly recommend that you pick up a copy of Mark Moffett’s Adventures Among Ants, which I recently reviewed. I think you would enjoy it.

If anyone reading this has posts or links that they’d like to share about any of these questions, please let me know. I could use the help 🙂

-The Consult-Ant

(Note: As I mentioned previously, I have been the “Consult-Ant” on the Leaping from the Box website. I answer questions about ants and ant farms. From now on I will post the answers here, and when Karen has time she will also post the answers on her site.)

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Cataglyphis Gets Around

Suppose you were running one day and you came to a barrier across your path. What would you do? Would you stop, assess the height and then go under if you could?

Cataglyphis is a species of ant that runs on the hot sands during the day. Individual ants look for food and when they find something to eat, they pick it up and run straight home as fast as they can. Spending too long on the hot sands can be dangerous. Researchers from the University of Zurich have shown that the ants can figure out how high an obstacle is just by looking at it (as they run towards it), and lower their body the correct amount to run under without even stopping. Talk about a high speed limbo! If the researcher made the barrier out of something the ants couldn’t see, however, then they had to stop and feel the barricade with their antennae.

Several groups of scientists have been studying many aspects of how Cataglyphis gets around.

First, the ants were shown to use visual clues such as position of the sun and polarized light to find their way back to the nest, as shown in this video.

Recently scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology are looking at how ants use smells in the environment to orient themselves as well. Because these ants pick up dead insects for food, it would be likely that they would key in on odors. Using odors to create maps is a natural next step.

It makes sense for ants to have multiple systems for orientation. If your compass fails, why not have gps?

Now I know why I always orient to those bakery shops.

Science Daily has several articles about this ant:

How Low Can You Go? Ants Learn To Limbo.

No Place Like Home: Ant Navigation Skills Used In Robot Navigation

Smelling Scenery in Stereo: Desert Ants Perceive Odor Maps in Navigation

Desert Ants Smell Their Way Home

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Ant Farm Art

Check this out:

No one besides Uncle Milton makes ant farms?

One piece of oatmeal?

Am I the only one who thinks this is so wrong?

Comments?

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Honey Bees, Trees and Propolis

Most of us realize that honey bees are important insects. They pollinate essential food crops, as well as make honey and beeswax. We know that honey bees need flowers to survive because they feed on nectar and pollen. We probably think of small plants, such as clover or dandelions, when we think of honey bee food. What is the role of trees in honey bee survival?  It turns out, a role as big as the trees themselves.

Here in the Southwest, mesquite trees are an important source of pollen and nectar for honey bees. In the northeastern United States, trees such as oak, willow, black locust and tulip poplar produce large amounts of nectar and/or pollen. Commercial beekeepers use their bees to pollinate almonds, apples, and citrus. Trees are significant food sources for honey bees.

mesquite-tree

Honey bees use trees as a source of other products, as well. When beekeepers open the honey bee hive, they have to use a special tool like a small crowbar, called a “hive tool.” That is because the honey bees produce a sticky, gummy material called “propolis” that they use to coat the inside of the hive. Propolis is made from plant resins the bees collect and carry in the pollen baskets on their back legs, mixed with materials from their own bodies, such as waxes.

Propolis Photo from Wikimedia, by Abalg (Adrian)
Propolis Photo from Wikimedia, by Abalg (Adrian)

Because I had just written a post about tree resins and ants, I decided to look into what is known about tree resins and honey bees. Although the existence of propolis has been known for a very long time, and many uses for it suggested, not a lot of scientific investigation has been done. It does appear, however, that honey bees are using the tree resins for some of the same reasons that ants do, namely to fend off disease organisms.

pine-tree-resinScientist Marla Spivak, who works at the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences department, has been working with a team to find out more about the anti-disease properties of propolis.

She has found that the honey bees in her area collect the raw material for propolis in the form of resin from birch and poplar trees, as well as some conifers. When they looked at the chemistry of propolis, they found some 300 to 500 compounds. The team is now separating the components and looking for individual compounds with biological activity against either honey bee or human disease-causing agents.

Turns out that trees are important to honey bees in more ways that we realized.

For more information:

Honeybees sterilise their hives by Matt Walker, BBC Earth News

Secrets of the Hive by Sara Specht University of Minnesota College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences

I also came across this article about helping the honey bees:

What Can a Lay Person Do?

Edit:  (Once again, we have a blog post inspired by a book. This week it is a children’s book, The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe by Loree Griffin Burns and photographs by Ellen Harasimowicz. If you are interested in finding out more about the book, check Wrapped In Foil for a review and Growing with Science for related hands on activities for children.)
hive-detectives

Source of book: The Chandler Public Library