Ant and Related Entomology Terms

A worker that searches outside the nest for food: In the case of slave-making species, a scout hunts for a host colony suitable for raiding.

A groove or other cavity into which an appendage can be protectively folded: The antennal scrobe, themobile appendage cavity on the head, is found in some ant species.

Chemicals used in communication within or between species: A semiochemical can be any kind of substance originating from an organism that gives rise to a response in individuals of the same or different species.

In insects, a simple sense organ or one of the structural units of a compound sense organ: The sensillum is a sense receptor that is part of the body of certain anthropods.

Referring to an organism with teeth along the edge; saw-like: In the article, click beetles were described as having serrate antennae.

A hair or hairs: Setae, or bristles of hair, exist on the forelegs of the mayfly.

Referring to a surface that is covered with a fine but close-set and irregular roughness: The outside layer of a shark's skin is said to be shagreened with a rough surface.

The shagreened surface of the cuticle of an insect can be rough or spiny,

A process by which liquid food is carried between the mandibles: By means of the social buckets, food can be shared with nest mates by mouth-to-mouth contact

The maintenance of steady states at the level of the society: Social homeostasis can be balanced either by control of the nest microclimate or by regulation of the population density, behavior, and physiology of the group members as a whole.

An insect that shares the essentials of life, like shelter, food, defense, and cooperation in reproduction: In the strict sense, a true social insect is one that belongs to a eusocial species; in other words, it is an ant, a termite, or one of the eusocial wasps or bees.

In the broad sense, a social insect is one that belongs to either a pre-social or eusocial species.

The co-existence in the same nest of two species of social insects: In social parasiism. one species is parasitically dependent on the other.

Social parasiism can also be applied loosely to the relation between symphiles and their social insect hosts.

The first segment of the gastral gut, also called the crop, where liquid food can be stored: The social stomach is quite useful because the contents can be passed to nest mates by regurgitation.

The procedures by which individual ants undergo changes in caste, behavior, and physical location incident to colonial development: The behavior of a colony of ants as a whole, or social genesis, can be understood only if the programs and positional effects of the individual members are both specified and explained more deeply at the physiological level, however such data is still far from being complete.

A group of individuals belonging to the same species and organized in a cooperative manner: In a society, some amount of reciprocal communication among the members is implied.

The science regarding the criteria of developmental biology, including the study of social behavior in animals and humans: Sociobiology is the systematic study of the biological basis of all aspects of social behavior.