Castes 3

How many different types of ant are there in a single nest? Do some have wings??

The mother of the colony! Queen ants are the egg laying factories of an ant colony. They are usually larger than the workers, and are instantly recognisable by the difference in size of the thorax (the middle section of the ants body) in relation to that of the worker; this is due to the wing muscles of the queen. The abdomen is usually larger too to accommodated the advanced egg producing organs. In the picture above the queen is shown without her wings ("deleated") as she would appear following successful mating during the mating, or nuptial, flight. Once the queen has founded a new colony her sole job will be to produce more ants, be they worker, males or future queens. Queens are the longest living of the three castes and can produce thousands of eggs in her life time; it is not uncommon for colonies of Formica rufa to contain over 100,000 worker ants alive at any one time. Some ant species are monogynous, meaning that they have only one egg laying queen in each colony, whereas some are polygynous, meaning that they have 2 or more egg laying queens in each colony. There are more polygynous species of ant than there are monogynous. An example of each is Lasius niger (mono.) and Myrmica rubra (poly).

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