Large carpenters (0.3 to 1.0 inches or 0.76 to 2.54 cm) large carpenter ant ( Camponotus spp.) ants from many parts of the forest in this world.
They build a nest inside a wood consisting of galleries chewed with their mandibles, preferably in dead and damp wood. They do not consume wood, however, unlike termites. Sometimes, carp's ants perforate parts of the tree. They also often occupy buildings and wooden structures, and are a widespread disorder and a major cause of structural damage. However, their ability to dig wood helps in the decomposition of the forest. One of the most recognizable species associated with human habitation in the United States is the black carpenter ant ( Camponotus pennsylvanicus ). This genus includes over 1,000 species.
Video Carpenter ant
Habitat
Carpenter ant species live outside or indoors in humid, decaying, or hollow, most often in a forest environment. They cut "galleries" into wood fibers to provide alleys to move from section to nest section. Certain parts of a house, such as around and under windows, roofing roofs, decks and porches, are more likely to be met by carpenter ants because this area is most vulnerable to moisture.
Carpenter's ant has been known for building a vast underground tunnel system. This system often ends up in several food sources - often an aphid colony, where the ants extract and eat melons. This tunnel system is often in the trees. The colony usually includes a colon "central" colony that is surrounded by a smaller satellite colony.
Food
Carpenter ants are considered predators and scavengers. These ants are collectors that usually eat parts of dead insects or other substances that come from other insects. Common foods for them include insect parts, "honeydew" produced by aphids, or the extrafloral nectar of the plant. They are also known for eating other sugary fluids such as honey, syrup, or juice. Carpenter ants can increase the survival of aphids when they care for them. They tend to be many species of ticks but can also express a preference for a particular species.
Most species of carpenter ants at night. When looking for food, they usually collect and eat dead insects. Some species rarely collect live insects. When they find dead insects, the workers surround it and take the body fluids to bring back to the nest. The remaining chitin shell left behind. Sometimes, ants carry the chitinous heads of insects back to the nest, where they also extract the deep tissue. Ants can feed individually or in small or large groups, although they often choose to do it individually. Different colonies at close range may have overlapping foraging areas, although they usually do not help each other in foraging. Their main dietary sources usually include proteins and carbohydrates. Examples of carpenter ants that cut down Chinese elm trees for sap have been observed in northern Arizona. These examples may be scarce because the colony far exceeds the standard size of wood ant colonies elsewhere. When workers find food sources, they communicate this information throughout the nest. They use chemical pheromones to mark the shortest path that can be taken from the nest to the source. When a large number of workers follow this lead, the power of signaling increases and a foraging trace is established. It ends when the food source runs out. The workers will then feed the queens and larvae by consuming the food they find, and spewing food in the nest. The path for feeding can be under or above the ground.
Although carpenter ants do not tend to be very aggressive, they have developed mechanisms to maximize their supply of food sources when the same food source is visited by competing organisms. This is done in a different way. Sometimes they colonize an area near a relatively static food supply. More often, they develop a systemic way to visit food sources by traveling back and forth by different ants or groups of individuals. This allows them to reduce profits from intruders as intruders tend to visit in a scattered, random, and disorganized way. However, ants visit resources systematically in such a way that they lower the average dead yield. They tend to visit more resource-dense food areas in an effort to minimize the availability of resources to others. That is, the more systematic the ant feeding behavior, the more random its competitors.
Contrary to popular belief, carpenter ants do not actually eat wood because they can not digest cellulose. They just make tunnels and nests in it.
Symbionts
All the ants in this genus, and some related genera, have a bacterial endosymion called Blochmannia . These bacteria have small genomes, and retain genes to synthesize essential amino acids and other nutrients. This suggests bacteria play a role in ant nutrients. Many species Camponotus are also infected Wolbachia , other endosymbiont are widespread in insect groups.
Maps Carpenter ant
Behavior and ecology
Nested
Carpenter ants work to build nests that lay their eggs in environments with high humidity usually because of their sensitivity to environmental moisture. This nest is called the primary nest. Satellite nests are built after the main nest is formed and starts to mature. Residents of satellite nests include larvae, pupae, and some older winged individuals. Only eggs, newly hatched larvae, workers, and queens are in the main nest. Because satellite nests do not have eggs that are environmentally sensitive, ants can build them in somewhat diverse locations that can actually be relatively dry. Some species, such as Camponotus vagus , build nests in a dry place, usually in wood.
Nuptial flights
When conditions are warm and humid, winged men and women participate in marriage flights. They emerge from their partner's satellite and partner's nest with a number of men while on flight. Men die after marriage. The newly fertilized queen discards their wings and searches for new areas to build the primary nest. The queens build a new nest and store about 20 eggs, nourish them as they grow until the worker ants appear. The worker ant ultimately helps him care for the mother as he puts more eggs. After several years, reproductive winged ants are born, enabling the creation of new colonies. Again, the satellite nest will be formed and the process will reoccur.
Linkage
Linkage is the possibility that the genes in one individual are identical copies, by offspring, of genes in other individuals. This is basically a measure of how closely two individuals are associated with a gene. This is quantified by the coefficient of association, which is the number between zero and one. The greater the value, the more two "related" individuals are. Carpenter ants are social hymenopteran insects. This means the relationship between offspring and parents is not proportional. Women are closer to their sisters than their offspring. Among sisters, the coefficient of linkage is r & gt; 0.75 (due to their haplodiploid genetic system). Between parents and offspring, the coefficient of association is r = 0.5, because, given the incidence in meiosis, certain genes have a 50% chance of being passed on to their offspring. The degree of linkage is an important dictator of individual interactions.
Introduction to kin
According to Hamilton's rule for interconnections, for relative-specific interactions occur, such as altruism kin, a high degree of interconnection is required between two individuals. Carpenter ants, like many species of social insects, have a mechanism in which the individual determines whether the other person is nestmates or not. They are useful because they explain the presence or absence of altruistic behavior among individuals. They also act as an evolutionary strategy to help prevent incest and promote family selection. Social carpenter ants recognize their relatives in many ways. This method of recognition is largely chemical, and includes environmental odors, pheromones, "movable labels," and labels of queens distributed to and between members of the hive. Because they have a chemical basis for emissions and recognition, odors are very useful because many ants can detect such changes in their environment through their antennae. This allows the acceptance of nestmates and non-nestrates denial.
The actual recognition process for carpenter ants requires two events. First, cues must be in "donor animals". This gesture is called "label". Furthermore, the receiving animal must be able to recognize and process the signal. In order for an individual carpenter's ant to be recognized as a nestmate, he must, as an adult, through special interactions with older members of the nest. This process is also needed so that ants can recognize and differentiate other individuals. If this interaction does not occur early in adult life, the ants will not be distinguished as nestmate and can not distinguish nestmates.
Altruism Kin
Recognition allows for the existence of specific-relative interactions, such as the altruism of a relative. Individuals altruistic improve the fitness of other individuals at the expense of their own fitness. Carpenter ants perform altruistic actions against their nestmates so that their dispersed genes multiply more easily or more frequently. In many species of social insects such as these ants, many worker animals are sterile and have no ability to reproduce. As a result, they forget reproduction to contribute energy and help reproductive people reproduce.
Pheromones
Like most other species of social insects, individual interactions are strongly influenced by the queen. The queen can affect individuals with smells called pheromones, which can have different effects. Several pheromones have been known to calm the workers, while others have been known to excite them. The peripheral signs of queen expulsion have a stronger effect on worker ants than the virgin queen.
Social immunity
In many species of social insects, social behavior can increase the resistance of animal diseases. This phenomenon, called social immunity, is in the carpenter's ants. It is mediated through the feeding of other individuals with regurgitation. Regurgitation can have antimicrobial activity, which will spread among members of the colony. Some proteases with antimicrobial activity have been found to exist in the vomited material. The communal distribution of immune response capabilities tended to play a major role in colonial maintenance during a highly pathogenic period.
Oligogyny
Polygamy is often associated with many species of social insects, and is typically characterized by limited mating flights, small queen size, and other characteristics. However, carpenter ants have an "extensive" mating flight and a relatively large queen, which distinguishes them from polygynous species. Carpenter ants are described as oligogynous because they have a number of fertile queens who are intolerant of each other and therefore should spread to various nesting areas. Some aggressive interactions have been known to occur among the queens, but not necessarily through workers. The queen becomes aggressive especially to other queens if they violate the marked territory. Queens in the given colonies can work together in parent care and workers tend to experience higher survival rates in the colony with multiple queens. Some researchers still adhere to the idea that wood ant colonies are just monogynous.
An exploding ant
In at least nine Southeast Asian species of the Cylindricus complex, including Camponotus saundersi , workers have a very enlarged mandibular gland that runs the entire length of the ant's body. They can release its contents by suicide by autothysis, thus destroying the body of the ants and spraying toxic substances from the head, which gives the species its name "an ant explosion". The enlarged mandibular glands, which are many times larger than normal ants, produce glue. The glue gushed out and snared and paralyzed all the victims nearby.
Termite species Globitermes sulphureus have the same defense system.
Selected Species
- Camponotus aeneopilosus Mayr, 1862 - gold tail ants
- Camponotus amaurus (Espadaler, 1997)
- Camponotus americanus
- Camponotus anderseni
- Camponotus atriceps - Florida carpenter ants (cf. C. floridanus )
- Camponotus bishamon
- Camponotus chromaiods - red carp ants
- Camponotus cinctellus - glazed sugar ants
- Camponotus compressus (Fabricius, 1787)
- Camponotus consobrinus - sugar ants stung
- Camponotus crassus Mayr, 1862
- Camponotus cruentatus (Latreille, 1802)
- Camponotus daitoensis
- Camponotus detritus Emery, 1886 - Desert Desert
- Camponotus empedocles - glazed sugar ants
- Camponotus ferrugineus - red carp ants
- Camponotus festinatus (Buckley, 1866)
- Camponotus flavomarginatus Mayr, 1862
- Camponotus floridanus , Florida carpenter ants, 90% genome sorted
- Camponotus gigas (Latreille, 1802) - giant giant ants
- Camponotus haroi (Espadaler, 1997)
- Camponotus herculeanus (Linnaeus, 1758) - Hercules ants
- Camponotus japonicus Mayr, 1866 - Japanese carpenter ants
- Camponotus kaura
- Camponotus ligniperda , a common species in Europe
- Camponotus modoc Wheeler, W. M., 1910 - western carpenter ants
- Camponotus monju
- Camponotus nearcticus (Emery) - smaller carp ants
- Camponotus nigriceps (Smith, 1858) - black-black black ant
- Camponotus novaeboracensis
- Camponotus pennsylvanicus (DeGeer) - black carp ants
- Camponotus reburrus Mackay, in Mackay & amp; Barriga, 2012
- Camponotus punctulatus (Mayr) - Tacuru ants
- Camponotus saundersi
- Camponotus schmitzi StÃÆ'¤rke, 1933 - sub ant
- Camponotus sericeus
- Camponotus silvestrii Emery, 1906
- Camponotus taino
- Camponotus tortuganus (Emery) - Carpenter tortugas
- Camponotus triodiae
- Camponotus universitatis Forel, 1890
- Camponotus vagus Scopoli, 1763
- Camponotus variegatus (Smith, F., 1858) - Hawaiian carpentry ants
Relationship with humans
As a pest
Carpenter ants can damage the wood used in building construction. They can leave a sawdust-like material called a frass that provides clues to their nesting location. Gallery of carpenters ants are subtle and very different from termite-damaged areas, which have mud packed into hollowed-up areas. Carpenter ants can be identified by the general presence of one node protruding upward, looking like a spike, in the "waist" attachment between the thorax and the abdomen (petiole). Control involves the application of insecticides in various forms including dust and liquids. Dust is injected directly into galleries and voids where live carpenter ants. The fluid is applied in areas where ant feeding is likely to pick up the ingredients and spread the poison to the colony upon return.
As food
Carpenter ants and their larvae are eaten in different parts of the world. In Australia, Honeypot ants ( Camponotus inflatus ) are regularly eaten raw by Australian Natives. This is a particular favorite source of sugar if Australian Aboriginal people live in dry areas, some digging their nests instead of digging it all up, to preserve this food source. In North America, a woodcutter during the early years in Maine would eat wood ants to prevent scurvy, and in the publication of John Muir, the First Summer in the Sierra, Muir noted that the Indian Digger of California ate tickling , acid gasters of the big black carpenter ants. In Africa, carpenter ants are among the large number of species consumed by the San people.
References
Text cited
Further reading
- Mayr, Gustav (1861): Die europÃÆ'¤ischen Formiciden. Vienna. PDF - original description p.Ã, 35
- McArthur, Archie J (2007): Keys to Camponotus Mayr of Australia. In: Snelling, R.R., B.L. Fisher and P.S. Ward (eds). Progress in ant systematics (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): a tribute to E. O. WilsonÃ, - 50 years of contribution. Memoir of American Entomology Institute 80 . PDF - 91 species, 10 subspecies
External links
- Ants Wood Ants Information
- Kentucky University Extension Fact Sheet
- Ohio State University Extension Fact Sheet
- Carpenter Ant Fact Sheet from the National Pest Management Association with information on habit, habitat, and prevention
- Woodman Ants Online Supplements for "Woodworking Ants: Biology and Control" by Laurel Hansen, Ph.D. from Spokane Falls Community College
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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