Ant colony in Pirin mountain

An ant colony is an underground lair where ants live. Colonies consist of a series of underground chambers, connected to each other and the surface of the earth by small tunnels. There are rooms for nurseries, food storage, and mating. The colony is built and maintained by legions of worker ants, who carry tiny bits of dirt in their mandibles and deposit them near the exit of the colony, forming an ant-hill. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Vihren from the south Kamenitsa Peak and the lake Tevno ezero Pirin range as seen from Kalimantsi village The Gazey peak looked from Polejan and the Upper Gazey Lake The Pirin Mountains (Bulgarian: Пирин) are a mountain range in southwestern Bulgaria, with Vihren (2,914 m high) the highest peak, situated... Subfamilies Aenictogitoninae Agroecomyrmecinae Amblyoponinae (incl. ... Insect mandibles are a pair of appendages near the insect’s mouth. ...

Ant colonies are eusocial, and are very much like those found in other social Hymenoptera, though the various groups of these developed sociality independently through convergent evolution. Eggs are laid by one or sometimes more queens. Queens are different in structure, they are the largest ones among all ants, especially their abdomen and thorax which are larger than most ants'. Their tasks are to lay eggs and produce more offspring. Most of the eggs that are laid by the queens grow up to become wingless, sterile females called "workers". Periodically, swarms of new queens and males called alates are produced, usually winged, which leave to mate. The males die shortly thereafter, while the surviving queens either found new colonies or occasionally return to their old one. The surviving queens can live up to around 15 years. Eusociality is the phenomenon of reproductive specialisation found in some species of animal, whereby a specialised caste carries out reproduction in a colony of non-reproductive animals. ... Suborders Apocrita Symphyta Hymenoptera is one of the larger orders of insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants. ... In evolutionary biology, convergent evolution is the process whereby organisms not closely related, independently evolve similar traits as a result of having to adapt to similar environments or ecological niches. ... In most birds and reptiles, an egg (Latin ovum) is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum. ... The abdomen is a part of the body. ... Diagram of a tsetse fly, showing the head, thorax and abdomen The thorax is a division of an animals body that lies between the head and the abdomen. ...

People raise ant colonies in captivity for research and as a hobby. An "ant terrarium" used for this purpose is called a formicarium. They are often made thin enough that you can see the entire colony inside their nest. These are also called ant farms. Ants tunneling through a formicarium. ... Ants tunneling through an Ant Farm The Ant Farm is essentially a colony of ants enclosed between two panes of glass. ...

Unicoloniality and supercolonies

Most commonly ants from different nests exhibit aggression towards each other. However some ants exhibit the phenomenon called unicoloniality: worker ants may freely mix between different nests. Another organization is supercoloniality. The group of nests where ants do not exhibit mutual aggression is called supercolony, while ants from different supercolonies of the same species do exhibit mutual aggression. Populations in supercolonies do not necessarily span contiguous area ^[1]

Until 2000, the largest known ant supercolony was on the Ishikari coast of Hokkaidō, Japan. The colony was estimated to comprise of 306 million worker ants and 1 million queen ants living in 45,000 nests interconnected by underground passages over an area of 2.7 km²^[2] Ishikari (石狩) is a subprefecture of Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan, located in the western part of the island. ...   literally North Sea Circuit, Ainu: Mosir), formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japans second largest island and the largest of its 47 prefectural-level subdivisions. ...

In 2000, an enormous supercolony of Argentine ants was found in Southern Europe (report published in 2002). Of 33 ant populations tested along the 6,004 km stretch along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts in Southern Europe 30 belonged to one supercolony with estimated millions of nests and billions of workers, interspersed with 3 populations of another supercolony.^[1] The researchers claim that this case of unicoloniality cannot be explained by loss of their genetic diversity due to the genetic bottleneck of the imported ants. Binomial name Linepithema humile Mayr, 1868 Native to Argentina and Brazil, the Argentine ant (Linepithema humile or Iridomyrmex humilis) has spread to many areas around the world like Africa, Australia and many parts of United States, including Texas and California. ... Southern Europe is a region of the European continent. ... A population bottleneck (or genetic bottleneck) is an evolutionary event in which a significant percentage of a population or species is killed or otherwise prevented from reproducing, and the population is reduced by 50% or more, often by several orders of magnitude. ...

Another supercolony, measuring approximately 100 km wide, was found beneath Melbourne, Australia in 2004.^[3] The City of Melbournes coat of arms The central business district of Melbourne, viewed from the north Alternate meanings: Melbourne (disambiguation) Melbourne is the capital and largest city of the state of Victoria, and the second largest city in Australia, with a population of 52,117 in the Central...

Ant-hills

An ant-hill, in its simplest form, is a pile of earth, sand, pine needles, or clay or a composite of these and other materials that build up at the entrances of the subterranean dwellings of ant colonies as they are excavated. A colony is built and maintained by legions of worker ants, who carry tiny bits of dirt and/or vegetation in their mandibles and deposit them near the exit of the colony. They normally deposit the dirt or vegetation at the top of the hill to prevent it from sliding back into the colony, but in some species they actively sculpt the materials into specific shapes, and may create nest chambers within the mound. This article is about Earth as a planet. ... Patterns in the sand Sand is a granular material made up of fine rock particles. ... Subgenera Subgenus Strobus Subgenus Ducampopinus Subgenus Pinus See Pinus classification for complete taxonomy to species level. ... The Gay Head cliffs in Marthas Vineyard are made almost entirely of clay. ... Ant colony in Pirin mountain An ant colony is an underground lair where ants live. ... Subfamilies Aenictogitoninae Agroecomyrmecinae Amblyoponinae (incl. ... Insect mandibles are a pair of appendages near the insect’s mouth. ...

Ant-hill from the Alps Download high resolution version (1024x768, 316 KB)Ant hill Taken by fir0002 File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...	Meat eater ants ant hill Ant hill Taken by fir0002 File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...	Large ant-hill in Poland Image File history File links Ant_hill_cm02. ...	Giant clay ant-hill in the province of Misiones, Argentina Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1280x960, 575 KB) Giant ant hill in the province of Misiones, Argentina. ...
Clay ant-hill aprox 3' tall in Argentina Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1280x960, 591 KB) Giant clay ant hill in the North East of Argentina. ...	Circular ant colony in Mulshi, Pune, India Image File history File links Metadata No higher resolution available. ...

See also

• Nuno sa punso A Filipino superstition about ant hills.
• Ant colony optimization, a technique in computer science inspired by ant colonies

A Nuno or Nuno sa Punso is a dwarf-like creature of Philippine mythology, one which is mostly invisible to the human eye. ... The ant colony optimization algorithm (ACO), introduced by Marco Dorigo [Dor92,DoSt04], is a probabilistic technique for solving computational problems which can be reduced to finding good paths through graphs. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ...

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Tatiana Giraud, Jes S. Pedersen, and Laurent Kelle. Evolution of supercolonies: The Argentine ants of southern Europe. The National Academy of Sciences, 2002.
2. ^ Higashi, S. and K. Yamauchi. Influence of a Supercolonial Ant Formica (Formica) yessensis Forel on the Distribution of Other Ants in Ishikari Coast. Japanese Journal of Ecology, No. 29, 257-264, 1997.
3. ^ Super ant colony hits Australia. BBC News, 2004.