Ant is the popular name for hymenopterous (or membranous-winged) insects of various genera of the super-family Formicoidea. Ants are found in most temperate and tropical regions. They are small but powerful insects, and have long been noted for their remarkable intelligence and interesting habits. They live in communities regulated by definite laws, each member of the society bearing a well-defined and separate part in the work of the colony. Each community consists of males; of females much larger than the males; and of barren females, otherwise called neuters, workers, or nurses. The neuters are wingless, and the males and females only acquire wings for their Nuptial flight, after which the males perish, and the few females which escape the pursuit of their numerous enemies divest themselves of their wings, and either return to established nests, or become the foundresses of new colonies. The neuters perform all the labours of the ant-hill or abode of the community; they excavate the galleries, procure food, and feed the larvae or young ants, which are destitute of organs of motion. In fine weather they carefully convey them to the surface for the benefit of the sun's heat, and as attentively carry them to a place of safety either when bad weather is threatened or the ant-hill is disturbed. In like manner they watch over the safety of the nymphs or pupae about to acquire their perfect growth. Some communities possess a special type of neuters, known as 'soldiers,' from the duties that specially fall upon them, and from their powerful biting jaws.
There is a very considerable variety in the materials, size, and form of ant-hills, or nests, according to the peculiar nature or instinct of the species. Most of the British ants form nests in woods, fields, or gardens, their abodes being generally in the form of small mounds rising above the surface of the ground and containing numerous galleries and apartments. Some excavate nests in old tree-trunks. One little yellow ant (Myrmica domestica) is common in houses in Britain in some localities. Some ants live on animal food, very quickly picking quite clean the skeleton of any dead animal they may light on. Others live on saccharine matter, being very fond of the sweet substance, called honey-dew, which exudes from the bodies of Aphides, or plant-lice. These they sometimes keep in their nests, and sometimes tend on the plants where they feed; sometimes they even superintend their breeding. By stroking the aphides with their antennae they cause them to emit the sweet fluid, which the ants then greedily sip up. Various other insects are looked after by ants in a similar manner, or are found in their nests. It has been observed that some species, like the European Red Ant (Formica sanguinea), resort to violence to obtain working ants of other species for their own use, plundering the nests of suitable kinds of their larvae and pupae,which they carry off to their own nests to be carefully reared and kept as slaves. Amazon Ants (Polyergus rufescens) often keep between three and five times as many slaves as their own inhabitants in a nest.
In temperate countries male and female ants survive, at most, until autumn, or to the commencement of cool weather, though a very large proportion of them cease to exist long previous to that time. The neuters pass the winter in a state of torpor, and of course require no food. The only time when they require food is during the season of activity, when they have a vast number of young to feed. Some ants of southern Europefeed on grain, and store it up in their nests for use when required. Some species have stings as weapons, others only their powerful mandibles, or an acrid and pungent fluid (formic acid) which they can emit. The name ant is also given to the neuropterous insects otherwise called Termites.
In the 1990's a new species of ant, in appearance the same as any common garden ant, was discovered in Budapest and in 2009 the same species was found in Britain, which has a suicidal attraction to electrical fields - an attraction which overides even the desire to eat. Like American fire-ants, these ants are drawn in vast quantities to electrical switches where they die and can cause failure of the electrical system due to the numbers of ants involved, typically hundreds of thousands. In Texas, fire-ants are a major cause of traffic light failures, being drawn to the switch boxes where they die and short out the circuits. Research Ant
Arrowroot (Maranta arundinaceae) also known as Araruta, is a herbaceousperennial of the family Marantaceae, native to the West Indies and Central America. It has a creeping rhizome with upward-curving, fleshy, cylindrical tubers covered with large, thin scales that leave rings of scars. The flowering stem reaches a height of two metres and bears creamy flowers at the ends of the slender branches that terminate the long peduncles. They grow in pairs. The numerous, ovate, glabrous leaves are from five to 25 centimetres long with long sheaths often enveloping the stem. A starch is extracted from the rhizomes and used in cooking and in herbal medicine for treating scorpion and spiderstings. Research Arrowroot
The bee is a four winged stinging insect of the order Hymenoptera. Bees form the super-family Apoidea of the sub-order Apocrita.
The most important member of the family is the common hive or honey bee (Apis mellifica). It belongs to the warmer parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, but is now naturalized in the Western. A hive commonly consists of one mother or queen, from 600 to 800 males or drones, and from 15,000 to 20,000 working bees, formerly termed neuters, but now known to be imperfectly-developed females. The last-mentioned, the smallest, have twelve joints to their antennae, and six abdominal rings, and are provided with a sting; there is, on the outside of the hind-legs, a smooth hollow, edged with hairs, called the basket, in which the kneaded pollen or bee-bread, the food of the larvae, is stored for transit.
The queen has the same characteristics, but is of larger size, especially in the abdomen; she has also a sting. The males, or drones, differ from both the preceding by having thirteen joints to the antennae; a rounded head, with larger eyes, elongated and united at the summit; and no stings. According to Huber the working-bees are themselves divisible into two classes: one, the cirieres, devoted to the collection of provisions, etc; the other, smaller and more delicate, employed exclusively within the hive in rearing the young.
The mouth of the bee is adapted for both masticatory and suctorial purposes, the honey being conveyed thence to the anterior stomach or crop, communicating with a second stomach in which alone a digestive process can be traced. The queen, whose sole office is to propagate the species, has two large ovaries, consisting of a great number of small cavities, each containing sixteen or seventeen eggs. The inferior half-circles, except the first and last, on the abdomen of working-bees, have each on their inner surface two cavities, where the wax, secreted by the bee from its saccharine food, is formed in layers, and comes out from between the abdominal rings.
Respiration takes place by means of air-tubes which branch out to all parts of the body, the bee being exceedingly sensitive to an impure atmosphere. Of the organs of sense the most important are the antennae, deprivation of these resulting in a species of derangement. The majority of entomologists regard their function as in the first place auditory, but they are exceedingly ssensitive to tactual impressions, and are apparently the principal means of mutual communication.
Bees undergo perfect metamorphosis, the young appearing first as larvae, then changing to pupae, from which the imagosor perfect insects spring. Whether the offspring are to be female or male is said to be dependent upon the contact or absence of contact of the egg with the impregnating fluid received from the male and stored in a special sac communicating with the oviduct, unfertilized eggs producing males. The further question whether the offspring shall be queens or workers is resolved by the influence of environment upon function. The enlargement of a cell to the size of a royal chamber and the nourishment of its inmate with a special kind of food appear to be sufficient to transform an ordinary working-bee larva into a fully-developed female or queen-bee.
The season of fecundation occurs about the beginning of summer, and the laying begins immediately afterwards, and continues until autumn; in the spring as many as 12,000 eggs may be laid in twenty-four days. Those laid at the commencement of fine weather all belong to the working sort, and hatch at the end of four days. The larvae acquire their perfect state in about twelve days, and the cells are then immediately fitted up for the reception of new eggs. The eggs for producing males are laid two months later, and those for the females immediately afterwards. This succession of generations forms so many distinct communities, which, when increased beyond a certain degree, leave the parent hive to found a new colony elsewhere. Thus three or four swarms sometimes leave a hive in a season. A good swarm is said to weigh at least three kilograms. Besides the common bee (Apis mellifica) there are the Apis fasciata, domesticated in Egypt, the Apis Ugustica, or Ligurian bee of Italy and Greece, introduced into England, etc.
The humble-bees, or bumble-bees, of which about forty species are found in Britain and over sixty in North America, belong to the genus Bombus, which is almost worldwide in its distribution. Of these species solitary females which have survived the winter commence constructing small nests when the weather begins to be warm enough; some of them going deep into the earth in dry banks, others preferring heaps of stone or gravel, and others choosing always some bed of dry moss. In the nest the bee collects a mass of pollen and in this lays some eggs. The cells in these nests are not the work of the old bee, but are formed by the young insects similarly to the cocoons of silk-worms; and when the perfect insect is released from them by the old bee, which gnaws off their tops, they are employed as honey-cups.
The humble-bees, however, do not store honey for the winter, those which survive until the cold weather leaving the nest and penetrating the earth, or taking up some other sheltered position, and remaining there until the spring. The first brood consists of workers, and successive broods are produced during the summer. The experiment of domesticating different kinds of wild bees has been tried with no satisfactory results. Some bees, from their manner of nesting, are known as 'mason bees,' 'carpenter bees,' and 'upholsterer bees.' Some of these bees (genus Osmia) cement particles of sand or gravel together with a viscid substance in forming their nests; others make burrows in wood. The leaf-cutter or upholsterer bee (genus Megachile) lines its burrow with bits of leaf cut out in regular shapes. Research Bee
Bembecidae is a family of wasp-like hymenopterous insects with stings, mostly natives of warm countries, and known also as Sand-wasps. The female excavates cells in the sand, in which she deposits, together with her eggs, various larvae or perfect insects stung into insensibility, as support for her progeny when hatched. They are very active, fond of the nectar of flowers, and delight in sunshine. Bembex is the typical genus of this family. Research Bembecidae
Entomology is the branch of zoology dealing with insects. It was started as a science in 1705 by the publication of Ray's 'Methodus Insectorum'.
The name entomology comes from the Greek entoma, animals 'cut in', the transverse division or segmentation of the body being their most conspicuous feature.
The true insects are those animals of the division Arthropoda or Articulata distinguished from the other classes of the division by the fact that the three divisions
of the body - the head, thorax, and abdomen - are always distinct from one another. There are never more than three pairs of legs in the perfect insect, and these are all borne upon the thorax. Each leg consists of from six to nine joints. The first of these is called the 'coxa,' and is succeeded by a short joint called the 'trochanter.' This is followed by a joint, often of large size, called the 'femur,' succeeded by the 'tibia,' and this has articulated to it the 'tarsus', which may be composed of from one to five joints.
Normally two pairs of wings are present, but one or other may be wanting. The wings are expansions of the sides of the second and third sections of the thorax, and are attached by slender tubes called 'nervures'.
In the beetles the anterior pair of wings becomes hardened so as to form protective cases for the posterior membranous wings, and are called in this condition ' elytra ' or ' wing-cases.' Respiration is effected by means of air-tubes or tracheas, which commence at the surface of the body by lateral apertures called 'stigmata' or 'spiracles,' and ramify through every part of the body.
The head is composed of several segments amalgamated together, and carries a pair of feelers or 'antennae', a pair of eyes, usually compound, and the appendages of the mouth. The thorax is composed of three segments, also amalgamated, but generally pretty easily recognized. The abdominal segments are usually more or less freely movable upon one another, and never carry locomotive limbs; but the extremity is frequently furnished with appendages connected with generation, and which in some cases serve as offensive and defensive weapons (stings).
The organs of the mouth take collectively two typical forms, the masticatory and the suctorial, the former exemplified by the beetles, the latter by the butterflies, in which the mouth is purely for suction. The alimentarycanal consists of the oesophagus or gullet, a crop, a gizzard, a stomach, and an intestine, terminating in a cloaca. There is no regular system of blood vessels ; the most important organ of the circulation is a contractile vessel situated dorsally and called the 'dorsal vessel.' The nervous system is mainly composed of a series of ganglia placed along the ventral aspect of the body and connected by a set of double nerve-cords.
The sexes are in different individuals, and most insects are oviparous. Reproduction is generally sexual, but non-sexual reproduction also occurs. Generally the young are very different from the full-grown insect, and pass through a 'metamorphosis' before attaining the mature stage. When this metamorphosis is complete it exhibits three stages - that of the larva, caterpillar, or grub, that of the pupa or chrysalis, and that of the imago or perfect winged insect.
Insects have been divided into three sections - Ametabola,Hfemimetabola, and Holometabola, according as they undergo no metamorphosis, an incomplete one, or a complete one. The young of the Ametabola differ from the adult only in size. They are all destitute of wings; the eyes are simple and sometimes wanting. The Hemimetabola undergo an incomplete metamorphosis, the larva differing from the imago chiefly in the absence of wings and in size. The pupa is usually active, or if quiescent capable of movement. In the Holometabola the metamorphosis is complete, the larva, pupa, and imago differing greatly from one another in external appearance and habits. The larva is wormlike and the pupa quiescent. The section Ametabola (which in the opinion of many naturalists are scarcely within the pale of the true Insecta) is divided into three orders - Anoplura (lice), Mallophaga (bird-lice), and Thysanura (springtails). The section Hemimetabola comprises the orders Hemiptera (cicadas, bugs, plant-lice, etc), Orthoptera (cockroaches, crickets, grasshoppers, locusts, earwigs, etc), and Neuroptera (dragon-flies, may-flies, white-ants, etc). The Holometabola comprises the orders Aphaniptera (fleas), Diptera (gnats, bot-flies, gad-flies, mosquitos, house-flies, etc), Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, and ants), Strepsiptera (stylops, minute and parasites), and Coleoptera (ladybirds, glow-worms, cockchafers, weevils, and all of the beetle tribe).
A division is sometimes made into Mandibulate and Haustellate groups, the oral apparatus of the former being adapted for mastication, the latter for imbibition of liquid food. Both types are, however, sometimes modified, and occasionally combined. Research Entomology
In Iroquois mythology, Malsum was the god of darkness, creating monsters and plagues to torment mankind. he gave plants spines, insects stings and animals teeth and claws to hurt man. He was killed by his twin brother Gluskap in a battle for control of the universe. Research Malsum
Abbreviations
Research Melissophilia
