ABSTRACT
Ants live in complex societies called “colonies.” In most species, each colony contains 3 basic kinds of adult individuals: queens, workers and males. Queens are reproductive females. Workers are more or less sterile females that construct and defend the nest, forage for food and rear the offspring of the colony’s queen(s). Males are parthenogenetically produced reproductives whose only biological role is to mate with queens; they perform little or no labor on behalf of the colony. In most species, queens are morphologically different from workers. Queens are larger, initially have wings that they shed after their mating flight and possess well-developed ovaries and a receptaculum to store sperm. Workers are the wingless individuals that one commonly encounters outside the nest. Their ovaries are either absent or less developed than those of queens, and they lack a receptaculum in most species.
