• Little black ants can carry 10 – 50 times their body weight.
• Their joints (where their different body parts connects) can experience more than 3,000 times their body weight without breaking.
• This allows an ant to carry a large piece of food (that weigh as much as 10-50 ants) back to its colony.

• Little black ants communicate by releasing chemicals called pheromones to communicate.
• An ant can release a trail of pheromones (like a scent) to lead other ants to food.
• Instead of using sight, they use their antennae to follow this scented trail.
• The pheromones can also tell others to attack intruders.
• Ants can also communicate by touching each other and through vibrations.

• Little black ants have sticky (adhesive) pads on their feet that help them walk up tree trunks and along the bottom of leaves or branches when they are upside down.

• They are active during the day (diurnal).

• Because of their small size, little black ants must work as a group to defend their resources.
• Each colony can have over 2,000 worker ants.
• Worker ants use their stingers to defend against larger ants that might compete for the same resources.

• Gaster flagging is a defensive behavior used by the little black ant.
• The back end of the ant is called the gaster.
• When a little black ant is stressed, it raises its gaster and releases a toxin (chemical poison produced by a living organism).
• The poisons repel competitors that may be after the same resources.
• If a competitor does not respond to this warning, the ant will engage in combat.

Ants in Battle (species unknown)
Dreamstime
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• Ants are considered a eusocial species which means they live in colonies, divide the labor and reproductive duties, and have overlapping generations.
• The colonies contain mostly worker ants (females) and queen ants.
• Each colony can range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of individuals with 2-38 queens per colony.
• The queen ants are fed more as larvae (babies) and grow to be larger.
• The queen has the responsibility of reproducing (producing more babies).
• Other females that are not fed as much as larvae become workers.
• The workers are responsible for keeping the colony clean and feeding the brood (the babies).
• Males only live for a few weeks during the summer when breeding occurs.
• Males and queens have wings, allowing them to spread out to find mates.
• The queen may remove her wings after forming a new colony.

• Little black ants and aphids have a mutualistic relationship (when both species benefit).
• While feeding on plants, aphids produce a sugary liquid called honeydew.
• Ants rely heavily on honeydew as a food source, so they use their toxins (chemical poison produced by organisms) and stingers to protect the aphids against other ants that compete for the same resource.
• This behavior benefits the aphids by providing protection and benefits the ants by ensuring they have access to the honeydew.

An Ant's Life Cycle
Wikimedia – Tate Holbrook
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• Females lay soft-shelled eggs in chambers in the soil.

• The larvae (young) are soft-bodied and do not have legs or antennae.
• The queen feeds the larvae.

• The larvae enter a pupa stage in which they do not move and are not fed.

• After a few weeks in the pupa stage, they emerge as adult black ants.

• Queen: several decades
• Workers (females): several months
• Males: several weeks

• The main predators (animals that eat them) of ants include other ants, beetles, birds, frogs, toads, and spiders.

• Little black ants eat dead and decaying insects.
• This helps remove the insects and then return the nutrients to the soil.

• The little black ant may serve as a pollinator – an animal that moves pollen, the powdery yellow substance found in flowers, from one plant to another.
• Pollen in flowers can stick to the tiny hairs on the ant while it searches for nectar or honeydew to eat.

• The little black ant carries seeds from the plant which helps the plant reproduce and create new plants.

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