Ants are insects as alias ants, belonging to the Arthropoda, Insecta, Hymenoptera, Formicicus. There are more than 11,700 breeds of ants known in the world, including 283 genera and 21 subfamilies. There are more than 600 species of ants identified in China. New breed of asexual ants have also been discovered recently. Ants live long, workers can survive for weeks to 3-10 years, and Queens can survive for years or even ten years. An ant nest can grow in 1 places for several years or even more than ten years. Well, there is one more thing to popular science that termites do not belong to ants.
Form and Features
There are 21 subfamilies and 283 genera of ants (the mainstream is the taxonomic system of 16 subfamilies and 21 subfamilies compared to the new system, which has identified several subfamilies from the ponerine). Generally, the body is small with black, brown, yellow and red colors, and the body wall is elastic, smooth or slightly hairy. Mouthparts are chewy and upper jaw are well developed. The shape of feeler of Ants are like knee of people, the scape as extra long, 2 or 3 section expansion in end, and whole antenna with 4 to 13 segments. Its abdomen is nodular.
The outer part of the ant is divided into three parts: the chest, the abdomen and the six legs. The ant egg is about 0.5 millimeters long, with irregular oval, milky white, larva-like and worm-like translucency. Worker ants are small in size, about 2.8 millimeters in body and brown in body. Males and females are relatively large. Belly fat, head and chest brown color. The first half of the abdomen is brownish yellow and the latter half is brown.
Social Character
Ants are typical social groups. 3 elements of sociality: The same breeds can cooperate with each other to care for the larvae; With clear division of labor; At least two generations in the ant colony overlap (excluding individual cases), and the offspring can take care of the previous generation for a period of time.
Ants are also famous architects in the animal world. They use their jaws to dig holes in the ground and carry sand through every grains of sand to build their nest. The “room” of the ant nest will remain at the beginning of the construction unless the soil is seriously dried.