Ant and Related Entomology Terms

A supplementary reproductive termite: A ertagoid is without a trace of wing buds, usually larval in external form, and with a distinctively rounded head.

An odor trail laid more or less continuously by the advance workers of a foraging group: An exploratory trai is a kind of communication and is used regularly by army ants.

An organ that secretes, often no more than small patches of tissue producing sugary secretions that possibly contain amino acids, attractive to ants and other insects. By definition, extrafloaral nectaries are not involved in pollination, although they may occur on the flower outside the perianth or the outer parts of a flower consisting of the calyx and corolla and enclosing the stamens and pistils.

The multiplication of ant colonies by splitting the worker force into two or more groups: In the process of fission, each group sets forth with its own fertile queen.

Special nutritive corpuscles secured to a seed coat of a plants to feed ants: Particular kinds of food bodies include Beltian bodies, Müllerian bodies, and pearl bodies.

A nest of ants which is commonly applied to an ant mound: A formicarium can be an artificial nest used in the laboratory to house ants.

A family within the order Hymenoptera: Formicidae also include the bees, wasps, sawflies, ichneumons (wasp-like insects), and similar forms.

The known living ants comprise 11 subfamilies, 297 genera, and approximately 8,800 species.

The condition in which several mated queens coexist, but only one queen ant produces a reproductive brood: In functional monogyny, the dominant queen suppresses the fertility of the other queens by behavioral or chemical dominance signals.

The growing of a specific fungus by ant and termite colonies for food: When a new colony is established, fungus cultivationa begins when a piece of the fungus is carried to the new nest and used to inoculate a growth medium composed of decaying leaves.

Fungi that are cultivated by Attine ants (fungus growers): A fungus garden is located underground and provides nourishment to larvae and adult ants.

A creature that eats and subsists on grain and seeds: Various families of vertebrates, particularly those of birds, and invertebrates, like insects, are granivores.

Relating to an animal that feeds on grain and seeds: Mr. Smart told his students to document and identify the different granivorous birds that fed on the bird feeders in their gardens.

Cleaning the bodies of nest mates of ants (allogrooming) or the individual's own body by licking and, in the case of self-grooming, wiping with the legs.

An alteration in behavior or physiology within a species brought about by signals that are directed in neither space nor time.

A simple example is social facilitation, in which an activity increases merely from the sight or sound (or other form of stimulation) coming from other individuals engaged in the same activity.

The hunting and retrieving of living prey by groups of cooperating animals.

A behavior pattern best developed in army ants.