The name ‘wood ant’ in The Netherlands refers to three Formica species. But in North America there are other wood ants that build hills. In this publication these nests are called ant mounds. In the document is explained that wood ants are not that common as in Europe and that these ants do not play a large role in the Forests ecosystem like in Eurasia.  There is also a scheme that shows why these ants are more prevalent in North America than in Europe and Europe.

One of the reasons described is the influence of wildfires. Read more about this on the next page.

Questions:

1. What was the influence to the distribution of wood ants by the trade of Scandinavian wood in Europe last centuries?
2. Wood ants near Venlo do well in production forests. These forests produced Spruce wood for coal mines in the past. Did these forests play a role in the distribution of wood ants?

Sources:

• Red wood ants in North America (PDF)

More species

Formicinae contains also the Formica group, the subject of the ant-maps project. Formica’s are great builders: they build large road networks and big ant hills. In the database you can a lot of photo’s of European wood ant nests. Looking at the pictures you could say that Formicinae ants build nests in existing holes and expand them with material gathered in the surroundings. Several species do also build strong and recognizable ant roads.

• Lasius fuliginosus

Here below you can look at some other Formica nests, for comparison. Photo’s made by Alex wild.

Formica exsectoides  photo © Alex Wild

Formica integroides  photo © Alex Wild

Formica obscuripes  photo © Alex Wild

Formica-ravida  photo © Alex Wild

Formica sp cf querquetulana  photo © Alex Wild

When I discovered ‘my first nest’ at the Dollemansweg site I I was wondered about the ant road structure around  the two largest nest in the middle of the super colony. The map below show nest 1 and 2, each about 3 meters wide and 0,8 high. They were built with just five meters distance. Mapping of the paths around the nests learned nest a had connections in all directions, but nest b was only connected with nest b by a huge meters wide road connection. I asked myself several questions. On other sites the same situations were found around groups of very large nests.

1. Why is nest b completely depending on nest a?
2. Why does nest b not have connections trough area 3, only via nest a?
3. Way doe ants from nest a not walk the shortest route to area 3, but use something like a ring road to pass nest b?

This map does show a less complex map. Two nests at a distance of 30 meters are connected with two small roads. The traffic is so intense that the ants cannot walk faster: a traffic jam! The solution the ants have is simple: by creating an alternative route, parallel to the original road. On each road the alts walk in a different direction like a two or four lane highway.

1. But how do ants create a two lane road, while they follow the trail left by other ants from the colony, which is almost always the fastest and most efficient?

The weather conditions have effect on these roads. 20 degrees seems to be the lowest temperature Formica rufa needs to expand the road network over distances more than 70 meters. More about ants and weather

	Dollemansweg
	Wiebche
	Zaarderheiken (Floriadebos)
	Ravensheide
	Maldens Vlak

This website shows you how wood ants build super-colonies of ant-hives or nests. The image below shows a population of these ants close to Winterswijk in the Netherlands. The nest are connected with paths or ant-roads. And amazingly the roads do all lead to the two largest nests in the center of the population. Are these two nests the capitals of this ant-land? Why are these nests connected to all other nests in this area? Do they trade goods? Why do wood ants build cities and road structures like we do? Are they that intelligent? And… do people and the ants follow the same basic principles for urban planning?

It took two days to get all the information to draw this map. And there were more questions than answers. To find answers to these questions I decided to look for more wood ant populations. And the hand- drawn maps from populations and notes piled up… and up. In February 2008 I decided to grab all this dusty paper together to put it all on proper digital maps and in a database. This website is an easy to use web-version of the database. First of all to make all the data easy to use for myself. But also to show other people how great these ant-worlds are.

Ant’s road maps

During years nest appear and disappear. During appearance and  disappearance nests change. They grow and shrink, they split or move. Each time a nest moves or splits a new nest-ID is given. Here below you see a basic wood ant nest on a nice spot on the forest edge and a small slope. It stats with a tree that felt down after a storm.

	A queen finds a nice spot under an fallen tree. She starts a small colony. It is a safe place, protected by the tree and soil.Example Zaarderheiken nest 218
	The nest grows and grows. It is going well. The tree has disappeared completely. Used by the ants to construct their nest. This is the famous ant hive many people know.Example Zaarderheiken nest 41
	But then… the soil is weak and cannot support the nest anymore. Or an parasite eat the nest material… The hive collapses and after one year only a pit has left. Example Zaarderheiken nest 11
	A miracle. The ants build a new nest in the trunk, left by the tree. The nest did also split in two, three or even four nests! It is a never ending story of appearing and disappearing nests.Example Zaarderheiken nest 199
Only a few special nest do survive the years, sometimes more than 25 years! Nest Ravensheide 88

We ‘bottled’ some wood ants and put some material from the nest into the bottle. The next day the moist condensed on the glass. One ant tried to climb up but couldn’t get grip on it. It glided down. But it was able to take some steps into the condensation and left some footprints. Have you ever seen the foot prints of a wood ant? .

More animal tracks : GEOlution’s online animal tracking guide.

Species > Paratrechina species near pubens

Distribution:

Map from last year is archived.

The Crazy Rasberry ant Paratrechina sp. nr. pubens is not just a Rasberry ant (Paratrechina pubens). This funny ant does look like the small Rasberry ant, but it’s behavior is strange. So strange that entomologists think is another species. So it’s scientific name is Paratrechina sp. nr. pubens. (Paratrechina species near pubens). In many media the ants are called crazy raspberry ant and running ants. But Rasberry is the correct name because it is named after the entomologist Tom_Rasberry. He is hired by NASA to control the ants.

The crazy rasberry ants were imported to the United States in 2002 by a cargo ship into Texas. They like it so much the ants started to colonize buildings and yards. But these ants do not have ‘normal’ behavior like other ants. Normal ants create roads to their food sources. But these do run randomly all over anything they get in contact with. Another strange thing is that they do not like sweet food. The  Crazy Rasberry ants eat electronic devices, like electrical boxes and computers.

Since 2005 the number of colonies exploded. Because the ants eat also fire alarms and now threaten the Space Center the public starts to worry. Most of the ant controls do not work and they keep growing in number. This could be bad for the house market, especially the Houston suburbs where the ants spread. A fast growing population outside the city is probably not an issue because the ants like human environment: constructions, warmth, moist and small insects.
Read more about the distribution of the crazy ants
More Crazy rasberry ants articles on this website

Description: A full description can be found here. These ants have a lot of hairs and are red-brown, but sometimes with yellow brow variations. Their legs are long and the antennae have 12 segments. Their main food is other small insects. They like all kind of habitats, from dry to moistly.

Why they do eat electronics is a miracle. Scientists do not have any clue…

How to control the crazy ants:

• Identify if it is the crazy ant.
• Close all points in the house where the ants enter your house
• Locate all the places in your house where the ants could nest
• Use chemicals on all places, including foundation
• More at pestproducts.com

Sources:

• Crazyrasberryants.blogspot.com
• Crazy Ant Identification (One Node Ant)
• Ants swarm over Houston area, fouling electronics
• Paratrechina species near pubens
• Houston Suffers Attack of ‘Crazy Rasberry’ Ants
• Exotic Texas Ant, Paratrechina sp. near pubens

Red wood ants are red-black colored ants. Red wood ants are part of the Formica group, but there are several species that we call red wood ant. Most common is the Formica rufa. But there are ants called  Formica polyctena that are almost similar to the Formica rufa. The difference is size and the hairs and their colonizing tactics: rufa colonizes Serviformica nests after the mating flight. polyctena colonize by splitting nests and build nests close to their ant-roads. A third species called red wood ant Formica pratensis.

If rufa and polyctena are two different species isn’t for sure. There are entomologists that believe that they are, but others say that polyctena is a sub-species of rufa. In larger forests it seems that the two ’species’ keep separated. But on smaller sites the two types do cooperate. It is also very possible that they reproduce. It could be possible that polyctena dominate rufa and use them as slaves.

The ant-maps determination project suggested that different types can live in one forest together, even into one super colony (A group of nests connected by ant-roads). But a relation with forest-size cannot be found. The Ravensheide Site in Germany shows a large forest with different types of distribution. There are connected groups of nests but also many outlying nests all over the area. Also a relation between the distribution of the nest and the species could not be found. An outlying nest is not per definition a Formica rufa colony.

Another species that seems to play a role in the wood ant super colony is Formica. fusca in the Formica sanguinea group or Raptiformica. These species in is found close to several large super colonies near Venlo. These ants do look like wood ants but are a little more red colored. Their nests are almost invissible when you do not look carefully. But the nests are in one line with the expanding wood ant super colony. The question is: does fusca play a cooperative role or a competitive role in these systems?

Note: The ant-maps project is far from complete. This means that there are a lot of observations, but there are to less to draw conclusions. The observations of the Formica fusca was made at the Zaarderheiken site.

Sources:

• Red wood ants in North America (PDF)
• Formicidae bosmieren
• Myrmecos sanguinea

Distribution:

Note: The distribution in North America is not for sure. There is not much information about Formica rufa available. The red wood ants do not have that much influence to the eco system in the VS as in Europe. Read more about this.