Formica rufa nest

Mating flight of Formica rufa / Bruidsvlucht / hochzeitsflug

• Formicinae

Formica lemani does look like Lasius niger, but is a litle paler. Also the odour of the nest from F. Lemani seems to be stronger, according to the antblog website.

The typical habitat for these ants is mainly heatland, close to trees. The nest on the photo’s below was found near Olsberg in the Hochsauerlandkreis, Germany. Several ants were bringing nest materials under this trunk. This location was destroyed during a storm in 2006.

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Anthills

Photo's from funny, large or other special wood ant nests

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1. Scape (Antennae)
2. Segments (Antennae)
3. Club (Antennae)
4. 2 + 3: Flagellum (Antennae)
5. Compound eyes
6. Occiput
7. Ocelli
8. Antennal socket (Antennae)
9. clypeus
10. Gena / cheek
11. frontal carina
12. Torulus
13. Left mandible
14. Right mandible
15. Tentorial pit

Acacia ants

• Pseudomyrmex ferruginea
• Pseudomyrmex flavicornis

Discusion at: http://antfarm.yuku.com/topic/7231

Photo’s below: probably Pseudomyrmex flavicornis

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.

• Formica rufa
• 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