Sentences with phrase «worker ants»
The phrase "worker ants" refers to the ants in a colony that do most of the work. They are responsible for tasks like gathering food, building and repairing the nest, and caring for the young ants. Full definition
The profession seems to have turned into an army of worker ants.
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In this case, queen and worker ants typically develop to be quite distinct adults based on how much food they get as larvae.
Scientists have discovered that the specialization of queen and worker ants goes beyond the presence or absence of wings.
A strong yet flexible neck gives worker ants the ability to use their heads to lift objects many times their own weight.
The Pheidole ant genus includes more than a thousand species, all of which contain worker ants with oversized heads and jaws that allow them to break up food.
Researchers have previously shown that the reigning ergatoid will smear secretions on any adult wingless male that enters the nest, targeting him for death by worker ants.
Allen is the amusingly engaging voice behind a neurotic worker ant who wants to explore other options in his highly regimented colony and embarks on an adventure with a young princess (voice of Sharon Stone).
Those include: the presence of different castes, including queen ants and workers; groups of worker ants in single pieces of amber, probably nestmates foraging together; and two workers of different ant species engaging in combat.
Fighting ants, giant solider termites, and foraging worker ants recently discovered in 100 - million - year - old amber provide direct evidence for advanced social behavior in ancient ants and termites — two groups that are immensely successful because of their ability to organize in hierarchies.
A small worker ant named Z dreams of winning the heart of the beautiful Princess Bala so he convinces his soldier ant buddy to switch places with him.
You are only a mindless worker ant if that is how you choose to see yourself.
The queens aren't making a mistake by hooking up with the wrong species, scientists report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Instead, they use the sperm from the foreign males to produce sterile worker ants.
This bait attracts worker ants fast.
Another top pick for best ant bait, Combat Max Ant Gel attracts the lowly worker ants with promises of a delicious meal.
Some ant species raid colonies of smaller species, killing the queen, scaring away worker ants and stealing larvae.
When her team monitored 473 pupae in 88 slave - making colonies, they saw enslaved worker ants destroy two - thirds of newly hatched queens and female workers of their captors.
When worker ants find a food source, they systematically carry bits back to the nest, leaving a scented trail for other ants to trace to the booty.
An unsuspecting worker ant in Brazil's rainforest leaves its nest one morning.
Their modus operandi — death by stretching — involves many worker ants pulling on the victim in a lethal tug - of - war, culminating in the arduous trek up a tree with quarry in tow.
Having had their colony exposed, worker ants try to carry the brood to the nearest shelter.
That's a puzzle because it would seem risky: Worker ants tend to kill all but one such queen.
The gene encodes an odor receptor that enables the insects to detect scents, so presumably the polygyne worker ants could smell a kindred queen.
When hunger strikes, the adult queen and worker ants visit the colony's nursery and cut holes into their own larvae to feed on hemolymph, the equivalent of insect blood.
To make the discovery, the scientists set up 31 artificial ant colonies with an unhatched queen and a set of sterile female worker ants and watched for the emergence of unfertilized male and fertilized female pupae.
«The body length of worker ants varied from 7.4 to 13.8 mm.
The social parasite T. americanus carries out raids on neighboring host colonies in order to steal their young, often killing adult worker ants and the queen in the process.
Worker ants grow specialized hypertrophied neck - muscles during development that allow them to lift and carry objects many times their own weight.
This enables soldier ants to guard a perimeter around worker ants collecting bug corpses, for instance.
They continue onward, like so many inherently conditioned worker ants in an ant colony, keeping their noses clean, politically speaking.
Queen and worker ants develop from the same sets of genes, but perform completely different ecological roles.
Foraging worker ants can unwittingly pick up spores as they pass by.
Meet the supersoldiers The species collected in New York, Pheidole morrisi, normally has two types of worker ants, according to Abouheif: minor workers, which are responsible for foraging, nursing, feeding eggs and larvae, and taking care of the queen; and soldier ants, which defend the nest and use their big mandibles to crack seeds harvested by the minor workers.
An entire subset of small worker ants, for example, develops enlarged glands and seem to specialize in finding and treating fungus outbreaks.
And you're right, we are who we choose to be, mindless worker ant or other.
The queen controls the direction of the worker ants with eyes only for efficiency, and, in the case of Kamprad, economic savings.
And now imagine being fed by a worker ant who regurgitates food for you from his gut.
Rather, the worker ants build a living nest with their bodies to protect the queen, young ants, and food.
In the first recording experiment, the authors found that butterfly larval acoustic emissions were more similar to those of queen ant than those of worker ants, although the larval acoustic sounds varied between and within butterfly species.
To better understand the potential role of acoustic signals in butterfly larvae integration and adoption by ant colonies, scientists compared two populations of parasitic butterflies: a predatory species that feeds on ant broods, and a cuckoo species that is fed directly by the worker ants.
But these previous studies looked at average levels of methylation within a sample of each insect type — taking, for instance, a group of worker ants, mixing their DNA together, and measuring the average amount of methylation among all their brains.
Researchers have found that adult ergatoids can sense when an unhatched pupae contains a wingless male, rather than a female or worker ant.
The study, published today in BMC Ecology, explains one way that the balance of the colony is maintained to maximize the number of worker ants and females that keep the population large and functioning.
This may have been accomplished by evolving close associations with the ant food resources, and unwittingly being brought back to the nest by the foraging worker ants.
However, a team from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) in tandem with the University of Helsinki and other collaborators from around the world, recently looked at a large data set with 16 species that provides insight into the differences between queen and worker ants.
In other words, they saw that instead of one specific gene, the relationships between sets of genes may help to explain the structural and functional disparities between queen and worker ants.
Worker ants can choose to rupture their abdominal wall to ward off or kill enemies.
Previously, researchers assumed that the smell of nonacosene, alone, would signal to worker ants that they were in the presence of a queen, Smith said.
«Our analysis of morphology shows that worker ants are much more than just smaller and wingless versions of queens, and have a body plan that provides great strength and maneuverability to their heads.