Ants! Ants! Everywhere there’s Ants!

Ant Life

By Ralphael DiBacco 4/30/2010

Ants have lived on Earth for more than 100 million years (Heinrichs, 2002, p.5). You can find them everywhere except for where it is very cold.

An ant colony or nest is made up of hundreds and hundreds of ants that they live and work together. They like to live in dark places like: underground

inside a log

on a branch or in a mound above the ground.

Each colony has many small rooms. There’s a room for the queen, store rooms for food, nurseries for the eggs and larvae, and the garbage room.

Take a look inside

Ant Body

HeadEye-2

Thorax- with 6 legs

Antennae- 2

Legs

Abdomen

Ants have an exoskeleton which means their skeleton is on the outside of their body.

Scissor jaws to bite and carry

things

There are many different types of ants. Some ants like sweet things, like fruit or honeydew they sip from aphids.Others types of ants like insects seeds or meat from a picnic. Some ants may even eat each other. Yikes!

Food, glorious food!

Each colony has a queen (whose wings fall off when she starts to lay eggs), worker ants and male (ants who also have wings.) Some colony even have solider ants that protect the colony from their enemies, like spiders and lizards, and other insects.

What’s my job?

The queen is the largest ant in the colony. Her job is to lay the eggs.

Worker ants are smaller ants. Some dig and get food. Others take care of the eggs, baby ants and the queen.

Solider ants are bigger than worker ants and keep the colony safe.

Life Cycle of the Ant

Time to make a home of her own

One day the queen will lay a special egg that will hatch into another queen. This queen will have wings and, when the weather is warm, will fly off with a group of males. They will mate with her and soon die.

The queen will make a nest and her wings will fall off.She will lay eggs and care for her young.

They will grow up to be workers and care for the queen. And some day she will lay an egg that hatches out a queen. And the cycle of a colony will start again.

Reference

Ant Life Cycle. (2002) Retrieved April 30, 2010, from: URL http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/insects/ant/Antlifecycle.shtml

Gakken’s Photo Encyclopedia “Ants”. (1979). Retrieved April 30, 2010, from: http://ant.edb.miyakyo-u.ac.jp/INTRODUCTION/Gakken79E/title.html

Heinrichs, A. (2002). Nature’s Friends Ants. Minneapolis, MN: Compass Point Books. Resources

Daronco, M. &Presti, L. (2001). Ants. Pelham, NY: Benchmark Education Company.

Berger, M. (1996). The World of Ants. New York, NY: Newbridge Communications, Inc.

Brenner, B. (1997). Thinking About Ants. New York, NY: MONDO Publishing.