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

• Pseudomyrmex ferruginea
• Pseudomyrmex flavicornis

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

Photo’s below: probably Pseudomyrmex flavicornis

Ants in other languages

About 12571 species of these amazing insects are living on our planet. Scientists believe that there are so many ants that their total weight could be 15 to 25% of the total animal biomass on earth. That is amazing, especially when you know that the number of ant species is negligible in comparison to the 30 and 50 millions animal  species based on Terry Erwin’s (1988, 1997) study of tropical insects. More about the ant taxonomy on the ant species page. On this website you find an educational section  ‘amazing ant facts‘ were you can discover more about ants.

• Study of tropical insects, Terry Erwin, 1988, 1997
• Hymenoptera Name Server, Ohio State University

Behavior

Ants are social insects. They communicate and cooperate to survive. Ants can communicate in different ways: pheromones, sounds and body language.

Anatomy

Ants are like wasps and bees part of  the Hymenoptera order. Hymenoptera have membranous wings and like other insects they have a head, thorax and abdomen with six legs. More on (simplified) anatomy of ants can be found on the anatomy pages. With their six legs they even leave trails!

• Ant anatomy, University of Florida

Biogeography

Ant can be found almost everywere all over the world. There is only one continent that is not populated by ants: Antarctica. Many ant species can be found on multiple continents like the Argentine ants (Linepithema humile). But there also species only to be found on specific places in the United States like the Leptothorax minutissimus. On a smaller scale ants species prefer specific habitats. By example; European wood ants prefer mainly woods and heatlands.

The smallest study for biogeography of ants would be biotopography. Basically this is the study of the position of nests, roads and functions inside ant’s (super) colonies. Compare it with the studies of  human urban planning. Read more on the Ant-maps project study of wood ants.

• How to Identify the Argentine Ant, Alex Wild, 2008
• Red list, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 1996
• Do ants understand the basic principles of urban planning? Arjan van den Bosch, 2008

Evolution

The oldest ant fossil is discovered in Amber. This ant is 92 million years old and discovered in New Jersey. This ant (Brownimecia clavata) already had the same anatomy as modern ants. Just like sharks and crocodiles their survival strategy is very good. They all stand for millions of years and even survived the dinosaurs.

• Primitive new ants in Cretaceous amber from Myanmar, New Jersey, and Canada, Engel, Michael S. and Grimaldi, David A., 2005

Relation to human

Because ants have a social live structure wich is similar to the human social life these insects are an inspiration and subject of study for many people. On this website you can find several ant to human relations revealed.

• Forensic entomology Can ants help solve crimes?
• Ants and volcanoes Can ants predict a volcanic eruption?

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)

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

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

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