ANTSTORE World of Ants

[ford-ute]

after reading miszt post in exotic ants section i was just wondering why ants of the same species and colony are different size Eg in my area i have seen majors different size workers of different sizes and different size abdomens i know that some species use some ants as food storage devices (sugar ants Comp's) but they dont come to the surface normally so is it that smaller ants are yonger or are they breed that way

[miszt]

diffrent ants have diffrent roles in the society, larger ants, often majors, are better at cutting up hard foods, often they will stay close to the Queen for protection, some are specialized for diffrent tasks, eg Soldiers or Replites (eg honey pot ants), its not really a case of why are they diffrent sizes, but more than they take on the tasks they are able to do

[JimmyVe]

If you look at Messor sp. the bigger workers carry bigger seeds, in most other species this also happens, when the pray is to large for a normal worker than the majors help them out. That is the mane reason why they have majors and minors. You could think why don't they all make majors and no minors than. Well majors need more food and it takes longer for them to hatch.

[miszt]

The most important thing for an Ant colony is numbers, as jimmy says, larger majors take allot more resources to create, it also explains why the first generation of workers are significantly smaller and weaker than subsequent generations, they are also allot less aggresive, even in aggresive species, they will shy away from confrontation as much as possible, because the early stages are the most dangerous for a colony, and the queen needs to produce as many workers as possible as quickly as possible

[Wedge]

I'm fascinated by the differences in my workers - check out the size differences in these close-up photos: Hyperlinks sind nur für registrierte Nutzer sichtbar

[Phasmid]

Wedge, the different abdomems you show on your site are simply that one is full of food so that its abdomem is streached, and the other isn't.

[Wedge]

Hi Phasmid,

if you're referring to the second photo of gasters at Hyperlinks sind nur für registrierte Nutzer sichtbar then that's an interesting idea.

I'm surprised to learn that chitin can be affected so - your post had me searching for more details and I found a bit about gasters on Hyperlinks sind nur für registrierte Nutzer sichtbar

Many thanks,

[JimmyVe]

With some species the gaster can expand much. Look at honey pot ants.