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Ants produce asexual and sexually!

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The major purpose of mitosis is for growth

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Like all insects, ants have six legs and three body sections. Ants also have a hard covering, much like a shell. In fact, you could say that an ant wears its skeleton on the outside. That's why it's called an "exoskeleton."

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The muscles are attached either directly to internal protrusions of its external skeleton, called apodemes, or indirectly, by filaments attached to the connection points.

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Ants hold the record for the fastest movement in the. animal kingdom. ...

Ants can be found on every single continent except Antarctica.

Ants are social insects which live in colonies.

Ants don't have ears, and some of them don't have eyes!

The largest ant's nest ever found was over. 3,700 miles wide!

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The circulatory system of ants and other insects is similar to that of a human. The work of blood in insects is different from the human body. Like in humans, blood flows only in the veins and arteries, but in insects' bodies, the fluid is free to move in any direction.

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Nerve cord – sends electronic messages through out the ants body, helping coordinate movement. Crop – holds the ants social food it will share with the colony. Stomach – where the ant digests its own food with acids. Rectum – holds the waste products which will be deposited in the colonies designated waste area.

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Ants do not breathe like we do. They take in oxygen through tiny holes all over the body called spiracles. They emit carbon dioxide through these same holes. The heart is a long tube that pumps colorless blood from the head throughout the body and then back up to the head again.

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A group of about 200 species known as army ants have two phases of their life: nomad and stationary. During the colony's nomad phase, the ants travel all day, attacking other colonies and insects they encounter for food. At night, they build a temporary nest and keep moving the next morning.

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Ants play an important role in the environment. Ants turn and aerate the soil, allowing water and oxygen to reach plant roots. Ants take seeds down into their tunnel to eat the nutritious elaiosomes that are part of the seed. These seeds often sprout and grow new plants (seed dispersal).

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Once mated, the queen never mates again. Instead of repetitive mating, she stores the male's sperm in a specialized pouch until such time as she opens the pouch and allows sperm to fertilize the eggs she produces. After mating, queen ants and male ants lose their wings.\

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Ants are omnivores, which means they eat plants and animals. Common foods eaten by ants include leaves, fungus, nectar (the liquid that plants and flowers produce), fruits, vegetables, sugar, insects, lizards, amphibians, and insect eggs.

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Circulatory System - Woodpecker Greeting Worker Ant

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The nervous system of ants consists of a long nerve cord that also runs from head to rear with branches leading to the parts of the body, kind of like a human spinal cord.

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How does it get its food? is a foraging/raiding insect, which uses vast numbers of insects from the colony to swarm prey. Circulatory Fluid Eciton hamatum E. hamatum uses a column raiding style which means that foraging workers leave the bivouac, where they live, in a three main columns that specialize in seeking out other insect colonies up to 350 meters away. Another way that ants meet their nutritional requirements is from other ants in the colony that have already fed, this is called trophallaxis. Hungry ants will beg or lightly tap on the head of another ant to "ask" for food. This will trigger the fed ant to regurgitate some its own food from its stomach to feed the hungry ant. Check out a video of some army ants in action foraging the forest for food on Animal Plant here.
What does it eat? Army ants are carnivorous preying upon many different types of animals including members of the Mollusca, Annelida,Arachnida, Crustacea, Chilopoda, Diplopoda, Insecta, and members of multiple other phylums. However, the group of organisms that the insects feed on depends on the area in which the ants reside. The ant species E. hamatum targets in the immature stage of wasps and nonecitonine ants but occasionally attacks adults as well. These ants also target treehoppers and multiple other social wasp species. Army ants are very opportunistic and will take other organisms as well if the opportunity arises since they are foragers. Their main diet is mostly due to the animals available to consumption in their area of foraging.
When the food that the ant eats is taken in it gets passed through to the food pouch in the abdomen, the most rear portion of the ant. From here the food moves from the crop to the actual stomach to be digested and the nutrients absorbed into its circulatory system, the waste is then excreted out the rectum. Click here to see a diagram of the inside of the ant.
The circulatory system in ants pumps the haemolymph using a dorsal vessel to flow from the head to the back of the insect. The haemolymph delivers nutrients and takes up waste products to be excreted. After, the haemolymph flows back to the head and is emptied out into vessel near the brain where the process starts again.
Ants' circulatory system is responsible for the distribution of nutrients throughout the ant's body. Unlike most mammals' circulatory system, an ant's circulatory system is not responsible for transporting oxygen throughout the body only nutrients, hormones, and cellular components involved with immune responses. For this reason the fluid in the circulatory system is not referred to as blood but rather haemolymph. The ants, as well as many other insects, feed mostly on the hemolymph from captured prey items.

Ants respire by letting air into their bodies through openings on the outside of body called spiracles. These spiracles, that let air through the exoskeleton, are connected to tracheal tubes that run throughout the body of the insect and provide the body with oxygen.

Digestive System Circulatory System Respiratory System

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How does it get its food? is a foraging/raiding insect, which uses vast numbers of insects from the colony to swarm prey. Circulatory Fluid Eciton hamatum E. hamatum uses a column raiding style which means that foraging workers leave the bivouac, where they live, in a three main columns that specialize in seeking out other insect colonies up to 350 meters away.

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Development of the tracheal system in Drosophila melanogaster.

An insect's respiratory system is the system with which it introduces respiratory gases to its interior and performs gas exchange.

Air enters the respiratory systems of insects through a series of external openings called spiracles. These external openings, which act as muscular valves in some insects, lead to the internal respiratory system, a densely networked array of tubes called tracheae. This network of transverse and longitudinal tracheae equalizes pressure throughout the system.

It is responsible for delivering sufficient oxygen (O ₂) to all cells of the body and for removing carbon dioxide (CO ₂) that is produced as a waste product of cellular respiration. The respiratory system of insects (and many other arthropods) is separate from the circulatory system.

Indian moon moth (Actias selene) with some of the spiracles identified

Scanning electron micrograph of a cricket spiracle valve

Insects have spiracles on their exoskeletons to allow air to enter the trachea. In insects, the tracheal tubes primarily deliver oxygen directly into the insects' tissues. The spiracles can be opened and closed in an efficient manner to reduce water loss. This is done by contracting closer muscles surrounding the spiracle. In order to open, the muscle relaxes. The closer muscle is controlled by the central nervous system but can also react to localized chemical stimuli. Several aquatic insects have similar or alternative closing methods to prevent water from entering the trachea. Spiracles can sometimes also be surrounded by hairs to minimize bulk air movement around the opening, and thus minimize water loss.

The spiracles are located laterally along the thorax and abdomen of most insects-usually one pair of spiracles per body segment. Air flow is regulated by small muscles that operate one or two flap-like valves within each spiracle-contracting to close the spiracle, or relaxing to open it.

After passing through a spiracle, air enters a longitudinal tracheal trunk, eventually diffusing throughout a complex, branching network of tracheal tubes that subdivides into smaller and smaller diameters and reaches every part of the body. At the end of each tracheal branch, a special cell provides a thin, moist interface for the exchange of gases between atmospheric air and a living cell. Oxygen in the tracheal tube first dissolves in the liquid of the tracheole and then diffuses across the cell membrane into the cytoplasm of an adjacent cell. At the same time, carbon dioxide, produced as a waste product of cellular respiration, diffuses out of the cell and, eventually, out of the body through the tracheal system.

Each tracheal tube develops as an invagination of the ectoderm during embryonic development. To prevent its collapse under pressure, a thin, reinforcing "wire" of cuticle ( the taenidia) winds spirally through the membranous wall. This design (similar in structure to a heater hose on an automobile or an exhaust duct on a clothes dryer) gives tracheal tubes the ability to flex and stretch without developing kinks that might restrict air flow.

The absence of taenidia in certain parts of the tracheal system allows the formation of collapsible air sacs, balloon-like structures that may store a reserve of air. In dry terrestrial environments, this temporary air supply allows an insect to conserve water by closing its spiracles during periods of high evaporative stress. Aquatic insects consume the stored air while under water or use it to regulate buoyancy. During a molt, air sacs fill and enlarge as the insect breaks free of the old exoskeleton and expands a new one. Between molts, the air sacs provide room for new growth-shrinking in volume as they are compressed by expansion of internal organs.

Small insects rely almost exclusively on passive diffusion and physical activity for the movement of gases within the tracheal system. However, larger insects may require active ventilation of the tracheal system (especially when active or under heat stress). They accomplish this by opening some spiracles and closing others while using abdominal muscles to alternately expand and contract body volume. Although these pulsating movements flush air from one end of the body to the other through the longitudinal tracheal trunks, diffusion is still important for distributing oxygen to individual cells through the network of smaller tracheal tubes. In fact, the rate of gas diffusion is regarded as one of the main limiting factors (along with weight of the exoskeleton) that limits the size of insects. Periods in Earth's ancient history, however, such as the Carboniferous, featured much higher oxygen levels (up to 35%) that allowed larger insects, such as meganeura, along with arachnids, to evolve.

Insects were once believed to exchange gases with the environment continuously by the simple diffusion of gases into the tracheal system. More recently, large variation in insect ventilatory patterns have been documented, suggesting that insect respiration is highly variable. Some small insects do demonstrate continuous respiration and may lack muscular control of the spiracles. Others, however, utilize muscular contraction of the abdomen along with coordinated spiracle contraction and relaxation to generate cyclical gas exchange patterns and to reduce water loss into the atmosphere. The most extreme form of these patterns is termed discontinuous gas exchange cycles (DGC). Recent modeling has described the mechanism of air transport in cyclic gas exchange computationally and analytically.

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Respiratory system of insects - Wikipedia

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An insect's respiratory system is the system with which it introduces respiratory gases to its interior and performs gas exchange. Air enters the respiratory systems of insects through a series of external openings called spiracles. These external openings, which act as muscular valves in some insects, lead to the internal respiratory system, a densely networked array of tubes called tracheae.

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Ants are some of the most prolific insects-in fact, there are over 1,000 species of ants native to North America alone. Though they are resourceful insects in the wild, they aren't welcome in most of our homes.

If you're tired of seeing ants in your home, trailing from the door to the kitchen in search of tiny specks of food, your best bet is to learn about the different types of ants and how to get rid of them. Chances are, you have one of the nine most common types of ants found in and around the home.

We round up common types of ants, from fire to carpenter, and a bit of information about each.

Black Garden Ant

This is the most commonly thought of "ant" when picturing the species. The black garden ant is an abundant, small ant that lives primarily outdoors in landscaping, under paving stones, and in soil. But, black ants can make their way inside if a large sugar presence is available. During the warm, summer months, you may spot these ants flying around-this is how they mate and form new colonies.

If you're finding black ants in your home, it is best to spray entrance points with ant killer and set out liquid bait traps to ensure the colony is eventually eliminated.

Pavement Ants

The pavement ant is one of the most common ants in the U.S. and is found in all 50 states. It has a brownish-black body and pale-colored legs and can be distinguished by the two spines at the end of its thorax (between its body parts). To get rid of pavement ants:

Follow the ants' trail to identify the path they follow, even if you can't find out where the ants are coming in.

Place ant bait stations along the trail you identified, following all label directions. The workers will find the bait, carry it back to the nest, and feed the queen, eliminating her and future populations. If the ant trail leads you to an outdoor, below-ground nest, drenching the nest with an approved insecticide spray (following all label directions) can be effective.

Warning

Do not spray indoor ants, as you will just kill the workers, and more will be sent out to forage.

Fire ants, as you could guess, are easily identified by their reddish-brown coloring. They have quite the stinging bite, and if they make their way into your home, they're often hunting for fats or sweets.

There are several natural ways to control a fire ant colony, should you happen to find one around your property.

Food-grade diatomaceous earth can be sprinkled along ant-invaded areas, such as windowsills, corners, and kitchen cabinets. Other liquid pesticides will do the trick as well.

Pouring boiling water over fire ants is a timeless trick to kill the colony as well.

Fire ant baits are the most effective product for ant control because the worker ants will carry it back to the nest to feed-and poison-the nesting ants, eliminating the colony in that nest.

A broadcast application of insecticide (labeled for fire ants) can be used in lawn areas where multiple nests are located or wider control is desired. This can also be used as a preventive control against ants that attempt to move into the area while the chemical is active. These tend to be granular products that are applied with a push-type fertilizer spreader, then watered.

Carpenter Ants

Carpenter ants nest in moist, decaying wood outdoors and in homes and buildings. If infestations grow and moisture spreads, they may also expand into sound wood or use it as a tunnel. These ants usually have more than one nesting site, including parent and satellite colonies. To control carpenter ants:

Trim trees and shrubs away from the home, and caulk all wire and cable penetrations through exterior walls. Remove or repair aging or decaying wood on or around the home.

Apply a liquid insecticide up the exterior walls around 3 feet and spray the ground up to 5 feet out around the perimeter of the home, using a product labeled for controlling carpenter ants. It's usually best to apply the insecticide in the spring and fall.

Find the carpenter ant nest(s), and apply a chemical insecticide directly into it and along its tunnels and trails. However, because there can be multiple nests, it can be difficult to locate them all, particularly the main nest, which is often outdoors.

Place insecticide baits labeled for carpenter ants in areas where they travel. This is recommended especially when the nests cannot be located.

Odorous House Ants

The odorous house ant will nest just about anywhere: under stones, logs, mulch, or debris; in the nests of birds or mammals; and inside homes, in walls, window frames, and insulation. To control odorous house ants:

Keep the ants out of your house in the first place trimming back trees and shrubbery away from the house.

Use baits to kill ants that have gotten into the home. Ant baits can be purchased at most home and garden stores. Following all label directions, place the bait where ants have been seen to travel.

Apply insecticide around the perimeter of the home and under the siding to help keep ants from crawling in. You can do this yourself or hire a pest control professional.

Locate the ants' nests, if possible, and treat them with a properly labeled insecticide. In some cases, however, the ant species will have multiple colonies, so treating a single nest will not relieve the problem.

Thief Ants or Grease Ants

Thief ants, or grease ants, that are found to be nesting indoors are best eliminated through baiting. This can be as simple as placing a small amount of greasy bait near the areas in which the ants have been seen. When controlling grease ants:

Baits are not effective if the ant is nesting outdoors. Instead, the best option is to locate the nest and treat it directly. To locate a nest, follow the trail of ants backward from the food source.

If the outdoor nest cannot be found, a perimeter treatment of the home can help to keep outdoor-nesting ants from coming indoors to forage for food-or set up new nests.

Pharaoh Ants

Pharaoh ant colonies can get extremely large and include many nests. A single colony can have one or multiple queens, with populations numbering in the several thousand to several hundred thousand.

This ant expands its colony and creates new ones through budding: A queen and accompanying workers leave the current ant nest and walk to a new site to start a new colony. When controlling pharaoh ants:

Use bait, the most effective method. The worker ants will carry the bait back to the nest to feed-and poison-the nesting ants, eliminating the entire colony instead of just the foragers.

Drenching of the nest is not an effective treatment for ants that expand their colonies through budding. At any disturbance or threat, the ants can bud, and if it has multiple queens, you can end up with multiple ant colonies instead of the one you started with.

Ghost ant colonies have multiple queens and multiple nests and are very mobile. Control is difficult because of the many nests that often make up a colony. Therefore, even a direct-nest spray treatment may not contact all members of all interrelated colonies.

Like the pharaoh ant, ghost ants expand their colonies through budding. The same control techniques used for pharaoh ants are effective for ghost ants.

Argentine Ants

Argentine ant colonies have many nets and many queens, numbering in the hundreds, with thousands of workers to tend them. Additionally, a colony that is eliminated within a structure will often soon be replaced by another colony. Therefore, it is critical that all Argentine ants in an area, both within and outside a building, be found and eliminated at once. Because Argentine ants expand through budding, control them using the same techniques used for controlling ghost ants or pharaoh ants.

Field ants build mounds in lawns that can extend up to 6 feet in diameter and as high as 2 feet tall. They also nest in firewood and other such piles. To control field ants:

Completely saturate the ant mound with a pesticide labeled for mound application of field ants. Increase the amount of water, if necessary, so the insecticide completely penetrates the mound.

Seal or repair of gaps, cracks or other ant entry points to help keep the ants out of your home.

Apply non-repellent insecticide, labeled for this purpose, around the perimeter, up and along the foundation wall, around doorways and windows, and beneath the siding.

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Ant Identification: 10 Common Types of Ants You May Encounter

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Different ant species have different behaviors and breeding habits. Know the types of ants in your home to determine the best way to get rid of them.

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Explore the world of the ANT - a fascinating and highly social insect

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Ants do have a heart, like all insects, however, it looks and functions very differently from our own. An ants' heart is long and thin and pumps the ant's haemolymph (blood) from one end of the body to the other.

What is a heart for?

In humans and many other animal groups, the heart has a very clear function. Its rhythmic pumping helps to force blood around the body, delivering oxygen to the various organs. Without the constantly moving blood, our organs would become starved of oxygen, and begin to die.

As well as transporting oxygen-rich red blood cells, which give blood its brilliant scarlet colour, blood acts as a vessel for all kinds of other ingredients, from delivery of vital minerals and vitamins to removing unwanted waste.

The human heart is probably one of the easiest organs to recognise, its rounded form and two chambers made famous by horror movies and science shows alike. Yet within an insect's chest, a whole different system has been set up to perform a very similar function, one that we would barely recognise.

Do ants have a heart?

Insects have a very different circulatory systems to that of humans. The difference starts from the most basic element, with the blood. The fluid that moves around insects' bodies, which is the equivalent to our blood, is called hemolymph.

Unlike our blood, haemolymph isn't red. This is because it doesn't contain red blood cells. The reason insects lack these cells is that their blood doesn't need to transport oxygen around their bodies. In most animals' bodies, the air is drawn into the lungs, and from the lungs, it is absorbed into the blood.

The blood then moves around a closed circulatory system, meaning that the blood travels to organs via arteries and veins. In insects, the blood doesn't need to carry the oxygen to the organs because air doesn't enter into the body at one point.

Instead of one set of lungs, insects have many spiracles along with their bodies, small holes within their exoskeleton through which air is drawn into the body. Once it enters the body, it is fed directly to where it needs to go, rather than needing to be circulated.

The haemolymph in an insect's body, therefore, plays a very different role to the blood in ours. Rather than carrying oxygen, it simply carries other ingredients such as minerals, sugars and hormones to the various organs.

Another key difference between our system and that of insects is that their circulatory system is an open system, while ours is closed. That means that within our bodies, blood is ferried around within veins and arteries. Within insects, the haemolymph simply fills the body cavity, surrounding the organs and fats that fill the rest of the space.

However, there is one part of the system that is closed, this is the dorsal vessel. The dorsal vessel is a long, thin tube that runs from one end of the insect to the other. It pumps the haemolymph towards the head of the insect, it then circulates back through the body cavity, before being pumped around again through the dorsal vessel.

Also read: Do Ants have Lungs? Do They Need Oxygen to Breathe?

Environmental Condition

Heart Function

Normal conditions

Steady heartbeat rhythm to maintain circulation of hemolymph throughout the ant's body

High activity or stress

Increased heart rate to support increased oxygen and nutrient demands

Low temperature or hibernation

Heart rate and metabolic activity may decrease to conserve energy and survive harsh conditions

Injury or infection

Enhanced heart activity to facilitate immune responses and deliver immune cells to the site

The dorsal vessel is divided into two parts. The length closest to the head is the aorta, while the second part is considered the heart. In terms of shape, the aorta and the heart don't differentiate much, both being long thin tubes, however, what separates the heart is the presence of chambers divided up by Ostia.

Additionally, smaller pumps exist at the base of some appendages, such as antennae and wings, in order to push the blood into these areas. The heart tends to be located within the abdomen, the final segment of the ant's body. This is where all the vital organs are kept. The aorta extends the rest of the way to the head.

Also read: Do Ants have Brains? The Purpose of Ganglia Explained

A heartless ant

We have a tendency to think of ants as tiny wind-up toys, busy about their business, but not alive in the same way we are. We might feel guilty if we accidentally hit a pigeon in our cars, but few people feel bad when they step on an ant.
Yet, just like all living creatures, ants do have a heart-pumping within their bodies, moving round blood that is not so dissimilar to ours. They may be different from us in many ways, but their bodies are still busy keeping them alive, just like ours.

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Do Ants Have a Heart? What is it for? (Explained)

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Ants' Cardiovascular System. Heart, Circulatory System, Hemolymph, Hemocoel. Ants Cardiac Organ, Hemolymph Circulation, Pumping Blood, Hemolymphatic System. Ants

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Trisha Patel Digestive System Over the human.

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Trisha Patel Digestive System Over the human.

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Group Video Part 1

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Group Video Part 2

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Trisha Patel Circulatory System over Ants 

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Trisha Patel Circulatory System over Ants 

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Trisha Patel Circulatory System Over Humans  

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Trisha Patel Circulatory System Over Humans  

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Trisha Patel Digestive System over Humans

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Trisha Patel Digestive System over Humans