My Aunt Ate Eight Ants!

Optigard Ant Bait Gel for sugar feeding cycles excludes Fire, Harvester, and Pharaoh Ants The powerful, slow-acting non-repellent active ingredient, thiamethoxam in Optigard Ant Gel knocks out workers, brood, and queens. Prevent Ants with Insecticide Spray. Save Money- Ant Control Kits. Kill Ants with Bait. Ghost Ants or Black Headed Ants Appearance Ghost Ants look like tiny, white apparitions who suddenly appear and seem to disappear just as quickly.

Reproduction and Nesting Ghost Ant colonies tend to be moderate-to-large in size with multiple queens. Spray around windows, doors, pipes, vents, foundation, foundation cracks, drilled holes or any exterior openings where the ants may enter the home. Treat where wires cable, telephone, electrical enter the house.

How to Get Rid of Ghost Ants

Spray as a low pressure spray along the foundation. FUSE may be applied twice or eight times a year, depending on the dosage strength and size of bands around the house. The use of residual sprays or dusts stress ant colonies, causing them to split into sub-colonies and scatter. This scattering also called budding , multiplies the number of ant colonies; multiplies your ant problem.

Baiting is the most reliable way to eliminate the entire colony instead of spraying with a typical repellent residual spray. When you bait, use a slow-acting bait. As with most ant species, reproduction is performed by a mating caste that consists of winged alates reproductives that reside in the nest until weather permits them to fly away and mate. After copulation , the male usually dies, while the now-fertilized queen returns to the ground to search for a suitable nesting site.

Once she has chosen a site, she sheds her wings and begins to reproduce, creating a new colony. She produces " worker ants " for 1—20 years until her death. Some queens have been known to live up to 30 years in the wild. Some individuals are specialized for reproductive function, while other ants are responsible for nonreproductive roles such as defense, caring for the brood, and foraging for food.

The system of division of labor naturally arises in conjunction with the formation of the group, rather than as a secondary adaptation; otherwise solitary queen harvest ants placed in forced association had division of labor arise in groups that lack an evolutionary history of such social arrangements. Roles are not constant and chemical interactions determine when certain ants engage in certain activities.

As such, these tasks are relatively fluid and cannot be understood as separate processes. The transition in behavior on behalf of one group triggers behavioral transitions in other groups of worker ants. A single queen ant establishes every colony. Large numbers of winged male ants and virgin queen ants fly to mating aggregation sites following midsummer monsoon rains. To found a successful colony, P.

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One lineage results in ants that become the workers of the colony. These are the ants responsible for the nonreproductive tasks of the colony. The other lineage produces reproductive female ants. After mating with the male ants at the aggregation site, the queen flies away to establish a new colony.

Upon arriving at her new nest site, the queen loses her wings and builds a nest in the soil. The entrance into the nest is then sealed off to lay her eggs in safety. With this, the colony is born. Over the course of the following six to eight weeks, the primary brood of nonreproductive worker ants emerges and begins to forage and build the colony. Mating is perennial and species-specific between subspecies of the red harvester ant. Males distinguish reproductive females of their species from females of other species using pheromones.

This occurs as a result of sexually stimulating pheromones secreted from the poison glands of reproductive P. These pheromones are perfectly detected by males of the species upon physical contact, resulting in the stimulation of sexual behavior. Mating occurs at reproductive aggregation sites.

Secretions from the mandibular glands of males initially mark these sites.

The secretions attract females, as well as additional males, resulting in strong male competition for mates. The system of mating within P. The male ants congregate and collectively give off a pheromone that attracts reproductive females. The more males present to give off the pheromone, the stronger the attraction for the females. Although this practice strongly favors certain males and leaves many others without mates, the congregation of males attracts more females on the whole as opposed to pheromone release on behalf of a solitary male. Consequently, it is more desirable for the less attractive males to remain in the lek than to attempt to attract females on their own.

Within reproductive aggregations of P.

Males engage in communal mating displays to attract females. Male ants attempt to mate with any female they encounter, but females resist copulation from the males. Consequently, the communal mating displays heavily favor reproduction with larger or more persistent males which are able to overpower the females and successfully copulate.

The male ants copulate for as long as possible, likely to restrict access to the female from other males to ensure their sperm survives to reproduce. The workers then construct leaf nests and help rear new brood laid by the queen. As the number of workers increases, more nests are constructed and colony productivity and growth increase significantly.

Workers perform tasks that are essential to colony survival, including foraging, nest construction, and colony defense. The exchange of information and modulation of worker behaviour that occur during worker-worker interactions are facilitated by the use of chemical and tactile communication signals. These signals are used primarily in the contexts of foraging and colony defense. Successful foragers lay down pheromone trails that help recruit other workers to new food sources. Pheromone trails are also used by patrollers to recruit workers against territorial intruders.

Along with chemical signals, workers also use tactile communication signals such as attenation and body shaking to stimulate activity in signal recipients. Multimodal communication in Oecophylla weaver ants importantly contributes to colony self-organization. Oecophylla weaver ants are known for their cooperative behaviour used in nest construction.

Ghost Ants or Black Headed Ants

Possibly the first description of weaver ant's nest building behaviour was made by the English naturalist Joseph Banks , who took part in Captain James Cook 's voyage to Australia in In doing this their management was most curious: This requires a much larger force than these animals seem capable of; many thousands indeed are employed in the joint work. I have seen as many as could stand by one another, holding down such a leaf, each drawing down with all his might, while others within were employed to fasten the glue. How they had bent it down I had not the opportunity of seeing, but it was held down by main strength, I easily proved by disturbing a part of them, on which the leaf bursting from the rest, returned to its natural situation, and I had an opportunity of trying with my finger the strength of these little animals must have used to get it down.

The weaver ant's ability to build capacious nests from living leaves has undeniably contributed to their ecological success. The first phase in nest construction involves workers surveying potential nesting leaves by pulling on the edges with their mandibles. When a few ants have successfully bent a leaf onto itself or drawn its edge toward another, other workers nearby join the effort.

The probability of a worker joining the concerted effort is dependent on the size of the group, with workers showing a higher probability of joining when group size is large. Multiple intricate chains working in unison are often used to ratchet together large leaves during nest construction. Once the edges of the leaves are drawn together, other workers retrieve larvae from existing nests using their mandibles. Upon reaching a seam to be joined, these workers tap the head of the clutched larvae , which causes them to excrete silk.

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They can only produce so much silk, so the larva will have to pupate without a cocoon. The workers then maneuver between the leaves in a highly coordinated fashion to bind them together. The time required to construct a nest varies depending on leaf type and eventual size, but often a large nest can be built in significantly less than 24 hours. Although weaver ant's nests are strong and impermeable to water, new nests are continually being built by workers in large colonies to replace old dying nests and those damaged by storms.

Large colonies of Oecophylla weaver ants consume significant amounts of food, and workers continuously kill a variety of arthropods primarily other insects close to their nests. Insects are not only consumed by workers, but this protein source is necessary for brood development. Because weaver ant workers hunt and kill insects that are potentially harmful plant pests, trees harboring weaver ants benefit from having decreased levels of herbivory.

1. Weaver ant.
2. Hörspiele: Die Verwendbarkeit des Märchens Vom Fischer und seiner Frau (German Edition).
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4. Red imported fire ant;

In several cases the use of weaver ants has nonetheless been shown to be more efficient than applying chemical insecticides and at the same time cheaper, leaving farmers with increased net incomes and more sustainable pest control. Weaver ant husbandry is often practiced in Southeast Asia, where farmers provide shelter, food and construct ropes between trees populated with weaver ants in order to protect their colonies from potential competitors. Oecophylla colonies may not be entirely beneficial to the host plants. Studies indicate that the presence of Oecophylla colonies may also have negative effects on the performance of host plants by reducing fruit removal by mammals and birds and therefore reducing seed dispersal and by lowering the flower-visiting rate of flying insects including pollinators.

Weaver ants are one of the most valued types of insects eaten by humans entomophagy.