The first generation of larvae are called worker ants, and they are all female. Worker ants have different jobs including foresting for food, taking care of the young, building and maintaining the colony, and protecting the colony. When a colony is young, it is often vulnerable to raiding from other colonies. This is referred to as brood raiding or “slave raiding.” Brood raiding happens when a colony wants more workers, so they raid and steal larvae from close colonies. They often leave pheromone trails, causing the colony to be raided even more. Many queens lose their colonies early on because of these attacks and fights between queens for the power of the colony also occur.
For many years successful queens only produce sterile female workers. The size and age of the ant often decide the ant’s job. Older and bigger ants move farther away from the nest and the center of the colony. The younger workers often keep close to the center in order to protect the queen (usually deep underground) as the last line of defense. After the population exceeds 20,000, the queen will produce fertile female and male alates in the spring. They continue to produce the males until the fall. The male alates are larger than the sterile workers and they emerge after heavy rainfalls. To make them good for mating, alates are fed more than sterile workers. You will rarely see a male outside of the colony, many only go outside to mate or build connected colonies.
The workers who are often allowed out are under risk of predators. Different ants behave in different ways when it comes to threats. Fire ants shoot out a poisonous venom at intruders and crazy ants often crawl on intruders (including humans). We call them crazy ants because of their erratic and unpredictable movements. Perhaps one of the most shocking things an ant can do to defend their colony is to explode (they die after exploding). There are only fifteen species of ants that are known to do this. They are colloquially known as the “exploding ants”, and they are found in asia. When they are defending their colony, and are in a pinch, their abdomen explodes and secretes a yellow goo. The goo is said to smell spicy and it is a sticky corrosive. The goo either kills attackers or stops them in the act. These ants full of glandular sacs of deadly liquid are minor workers in the colony hierarchy. They are expendables who will bite their enemy, turn their but towards them, and contract their muscles so hard that their skin splits open releasing the goo.
To increase security, there are some connected colonies called supercolonies where there is more than one queen and a huge number of workers. A colony will only last as long as the queen (generally) and the life expectancy of ant queens varies from 7 to 30 years old, the workers and drones live for much shorter. When the queen ant is about to die or she runs out of sperm, the colony will come to an end. When this happens her subjects will communicate that with each other, however, at this point, many of her subjects are already dead and can not be replaced. Oftentimes, old colonies will get taken over and raided by a new one. Even though the queen’s rule has come to an end, her genes continue to spread in new colonies.
The ant hierarchy is intense and complicated. It seems almost impossible that they were born with this capability to know what their roles are in a monarchy. Ant monarchies may remind you of human social order. There’s a leader, young, people to feed the young, territories, defense against intruders, builders, and foragers. Ants seem unassuming and uninteresting at first but when you take a closer look at their colonies, you realize how impressive ants really are.