Ants are social insects and the usual condition of the insect societies is that the colony is a cohesive unit with some degree of genetic integrity. The colony develops the ability to distinguish all its colonial members. There is a very strong group identity that develops and unifies the colony, at least for many species and under many circumstances.
The ants are ancient insects, and they date back long before the supercontinent of Gondwana collapsed. Ants have been at war for millions of years, not in the order of hundreds of millions of years. The wars of the ants became famous, even before modern biologists became interested in the phenomenon. For example, Charles Darwin even wrote about the conflict between ants.
There are two ways which relate with “wars” in ants societies. One of them is fighting between colonies of the same species. The other category includes interactions between different ants. Both types of conflict are important to ant biology.
Ant wars are direct, aggressive interactions between ants in different states. They compete with other ants. In the context of the competition, the ant war will be the conflict when the ants physically fight each other. In fact, ants are fascinated by the fact that there are conflicts within and between species.
Ants often encounter other ants, especially in the tropics. A recent study in the Appalachian Mountains in the United States revealed how dense the ants are. Inspectors went to the forest, took dead insects, and threw them into the forest to see how long it would take to meet those food predators or consumers. Almost all of these food items were found by ants, and it didn’t take more than a few minutes to find any of them. The ants therefore run into members of other colonies or other species. In a habitat containing a large number of ants, cross-species are very high. These kinds of interactions occur very frequently.
The ants were the first evolutionary vertebrates as their main enemies. Scientists reveals that the purpose of the invasion of the ants occurred when evolution.
Many of these ants are armed with a very powerful stick which is effective at attacking enemies like humans, but these are not as effective as other insects. Ants have different types of weapons that can be used in Ant Wars. This suggests that these aggressive conflicts have been crucial to their evolution. In Ants wars, often the ants will cooperate – members of an aggressive colony will attack other members of the colony, or cut them to pieces while the enemy is being held. Some ants’ descendants have actually lost their string. For many generations this organ was transformed into a chemical weapons distribution system.
The ants are actually quite unpleasant. There is at least one species that has a very large gland in the body of the workers. They spreads substance such as glue to the surrounding area, when they are disturbed enough. Other ants have different types of glands, in the head or abdomen helps to releasing toxic chemicals that confuse the enemy. Thus, their conflict can range from physical battles to chemical wars.
When a colony has a chemical signature, ants could tell their colony mates from non-colony ants. In a lot of invasive ant species that capacity has been lost. Within a species they basically greet all the other ants that they contact as members of their own colony. They treat other species as enemies or aliens. When an invasive insect is introduced into a new habitat by humans, it can spread to a large extent and gain an unprecedented amount of dens in its native habitats. Ranges of invasive ants can definitely cover thousands of square kilometers. Ants at one end of the range can be introduced to the other end of the range and will not interfere aggressively. These ants, who have become successful invaders, are not closely related to one another, they come from different sub-families of ants and are very diverse.
Soldiers are special ants found within the colonies of some ants, not all ants have such soldiers who are part of a workforce that specializes in security. Those soldiers have larger bodies, behave differently than other workers.
A type of Army ants (AA) in the New World tropics invades mature colonies of leaf-cutting ants with regularity. Who is this AA and leaf-cutting ants?
Army ants (AA) belongs to ant subfamily that has several unique behaviors. They have advanced socialism and developed it better than any other social insect. Males are occasionally produced by the colony and they have wings. To look for young females from other colonies, males leave the colony. AA is generally not exceptionally large, relative to other ants. They have a lot of colonies and everything they do is done in huge, cohesive groups and it causes to achieve success. AA do not engage in Ant Wars with other AA. However, some of AA’s favorite prey is other ant species.
The leaf-cutting ants have giant nests, large colonies and millions of workers in a single colony. They produce very large body soldiers, weighs a hundred times than a small servant. Leaf-cutting ants have large chambers and a large part is underground.
When AA attacks the colonies of mature leaf-cutting ants, soldiers of both species line up against AA soldiers – and engage in catastrophic battles that may occur just days before the AA finally breaks down the defense. Go down to the green cutting nest and loot the brood. They are not successful in the end in almost all cases, and AA ends with a breakup. This is an evidence, that wars or battles with other ants are an important factor in ant evolution.
According to the current research they beginning to recognize that learning how to colonize or not engage in conflict can help us understand biological invasions and their potential harm. Some of these invasive ants cause enormous environmental problems, not only to humans, but also to the disruptive ecology of the places they invade.
Cover Photo – by City Roundup
