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Ant
family of insects / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ants are a kind of insect that lives together in large colonies. They are the family Formicidae.[5][6]
Ants | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A group of fire ants. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Scientific classification ![]() | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Domain: | Eukaryota | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Kingdom: | Animalia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Phylum: | Arthropoda | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Class: | Insecta | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Order: | Hymenoptera | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Superfamily: | Formicoidea | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Family: | Formicidae Latreille, 1809 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Type species | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lasius niger Linnaeus, 1758
Cladogram of subfamilies
A phylogeny of the living ant subfamilies.[2][3] |
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Ants are a lot like bees and wasps. They all originate from the same common ancestor a long time ago, but now have evolved into very different forms, ants being flightless compared to other members of the order Hymenoptera. It is believed that there are about 22,000 different species of ant, but we have only documented approximately 12,500 of them.[7][8][9] Every species of ant has a thin middle segment, known as a thorax, as well as two long rods on their head called antennae.
Ants are social animals, and live in colonies that can range wildly in terms of size. Some species of ants live in small groups, others eat other animals, others still do both. Many ants work together in very large groups to accomplish their tasks. These colonies can have millions of ants in them that travel outside daily over an extremely large area. Ants are small, but they are very strong. Some ants are strong enough to carry things that are as heavy as 10 times their own weight. The most common ant variety is the worker. Workers dig tunnels and carry food back to the colony so that fellow workers and the queen can eat.[10] The Queen is the mother of all the ants in the colony. She is often the only non-worker ant, however, specialty workers such as soldiers or repletes, as well as reproducing ants that are capable of flight known as alates.