{"id":1302,"date":"2024-08-16T07:32:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-16T11:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/?p=1302"},"modified":"2025-09-19T10:22:45","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T14:22:45","slug":"interesting-activities-of-ants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/interesting-activities-of-ants\/","title":{"rendered":"Interesting activities of ants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Heather N. Kolich, ANR Agent, UGA Extension Forsyth County<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walking down to the compost pile the other day, I noticed a line of dark spots on the ground. From my lofty five-foot height, they looked like tiny balls of fertilizer granules or little mounds of excavated earth \u2013 except they were the wrong color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A line of dark, granular piles on the ground presented a mystery. Photo by H. N. Kolich, UGA Extension.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I found a stick and scooped up some of the dark stuff for a closer look. To my surprise, the dark spots were piles of dead ants. Hundreds of ant corpses were neatly clustered on leaves and heaped into discrete spots on the bare ground. This was a mystery I had to explore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ants have been around for roughly 168 million years. Currently numbered at more than 17,000 species, ants are the most abundant terrestrial creature and are present on all continents except Antarctica. Their activities provide several ecological services. Their tunneling behavior aerates soil. As they scavenge dead leaves and carrion, ants clear away debris and recycle nutrients for soil fertility. They carry seeds to new places, aiding in the spread of plant life. Ants prey on other insects, including pests like termites, ticks, and plant-eating arthropods, providing population control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ant
Ants\u2019 scavenging behavior helps clean the earth of carrion and plant debris. Photo by Eugen Kucheruk on Unsplash.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Like other colony-dwelling insects, ants perform different jobs in support of the community. Young ants care for the queen and nurture larvae, important responsibilities performed within the safety of the nest. As they mature, ants move into riskier career paths, such as forging for food and guarding the colony\u2019s territory. It turns out that one of the careers is serving as undertakers who remove the dead from the nest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bringing out the dead is a practice called necrophoresis. Literally, the word originates from Greek and means transport the dead<\/em>. Literarily, Robert Frost commemorated the behavior \u2013 without the fancy word \u2013 in his 1936, tongue in cheek poem \u201cDepartmental<\/a>,\u201d which I remember from high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An
An undertaker ant (center, bottom edge of leaf) carries the corpse of a colony mate to an ant cemetery. Photo by H. N. Kolich, UGA Extension.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Removing dead colony mates is a health measure to prevent the spread of disease and pathogens within the nest. In ants, it\u2019s also a social behavior. Undertaker ants carry the corpses and drop them outside the nest. But they don\u2019t drop them just anywhere.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through direct communication \u2013 antennae touching as they pass other workers \u2013 and indirect communication, which might include some trace pheromone lingering in the environment, ants coordinate their mortician tasks. At the outset of housecleaning, groups of undertakers make separate cemeteries. As the task continues, however, and interactions with worker mates increase, certain cemeteries get more deposits of dead bodies. Myrmecologists, or researchers who study ants, have observed a correlation between the density of corpses in a pile and the likelihood of an undertaker depositing its burden in that pile. The researchers have even observed the disappearance of smaller middens as larger ones expand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An
Ants communicate by touching antennae. Photo by Maksim Shutov on Unsplash.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A few days later, I checked the area to see if the cemeteries were still there. They were, and undertaker ants were still carrying corpses to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What caused the mass mortality? I\u2019ll never know. Five weeks of dry, hot weather could have been a factor. Desiccation and heat might have disrupted the foraging behaviors or abilities of the colony, resulting in high mortality. Ants are also territorial and will fight to the death against invaders. A scarcity of water and food could have influenced a colony to move to better digs, resulting in an ant war. Or perhaps in a colony of millions of ants, hundreds of daily deaths are normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Ants working as undertakers construct heaps of dead nest mates on a leaf. Photo by H. N. Kolich, UGA Extension.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One lingering question remains. If ants routinely clean debris from our environment, what will clean up debris that ants reject?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walking down to the compost pile the other day, I noticed a line of dark spots on the ground. From my lofty five-foot height, they looked like tiny balls of fertilizer granules or little mounds of excavated earth \u2013 except they were the wrong color.<\/p>\n

I found a stick and scooped up some of the dark stuff for a closer look. To my surprise, the dark spots were piles of dead ants. Hundreds of ant corpses were neatly clustered on leaves and heaped into discrete spots on the bare ground. This was a mystery I had to explore.<\/p>\n

Ants have been around for roughly 168 million years. Currently numbered at more than 17,000 species, ants are the most abundant terrestrial creature and are present on all continents except Antarctica. Their activities provide several ecological services. Their tunneling behavior aerates soil. As they scavenge dead leaves and carrion, ants clear away debris and recycle nutrients for soil fertility. They carry seeds to new places, aiding in the spread of plant life. Ants prey on other insects, including pests like termites, ticks, and plant-eating arthropods, providing population control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":452,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[338],"class_list":["post-1302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anr","tag-ants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/452"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1302"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1312,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions\/1312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}