Ant-maps > en > home > The red woodants project

Welcome on ant-maps.com

Ant-maps is an Internet site concerning ants and maps. Ants are social insects. They live together in their nest and coöperate to the existence of their colony. Centrally in ant-colonies are one or more queens. They are looked after and are protected by the worker-ants. Once per year new queens and winged males fly out. This is called the mating flight. The fertilised queens found new colonies afterwards. The nests or colonies of woodants are good examples of such colonies.

In the Netherlands come several species of wood ants are protected. The bald red bunch ant (Formica polyctena) and the hairy red wood ant (Formica rufa). They build large nests or domes,  sometimes more than one meter high. In these nests 30,000 ants and several queens live together. The wood-ant project, which presented on this web site, aims at maps of these anthills. Generally in the woods, but sometimes also in the city or along the way.

The colonies of woodants are often recognizable domes of needles in the woods. But what is amazing is that the ants move from one nest to another one. For example to obtain or bring food. The different woodant species do even cooperate this way. A group of nests that is connected with ant roads is called  a super colony. This wood ant rpoject focuses to these super colonies and compares them. The Largest in the database is 30 hectares large, smaller ones only a few hectare. Of the most beautiful super colonies in the surroundings of Venlo you’ll find  in the Floriade. No wonder that there so much attention to the protection of this super colony. And fortunately successfully!

More information on ants in general and the project:

• Simplyfied list of research sites and nests with basic data and photo’s.
• Basic information on ants and amazing ant-acts.
• Floriade 2012 Venlo, the protection of this endangered supercolony.