Nest cedar lumber. When digging the nests, they use the wood shavings scraped from the wall to create partitions within the tunnels. The nests are usually round and have about 1-4 tunnels, each with multiple branches. Because these materials are often useful for humans in construction, "X. virgininica's" nesting behavior presents the disadvantage of weakening wood in manmade structures. The abundance of biological resources within the nest has led to a number of specialized predators. The aardvark and the ant eater use long tongues to prey upon termite and ant nests. Birds such as the honey buzzard specialize on wasp and
Red harvester ant high availability of food and good foraging conditions, therefore a favorable cost-benefit ratio for the foragers exists. If the patroller return rate is too high, it may be a warning of danger, such as the sighting of a predatory lizard. A lower return rate could indicate lack of available food, or heavy competition Ant foraging is guided by chemical signals that lead the ants up to 50–60 m from the nest at times. Once an ant has decided to forage, it will almost always continue until it has found food to take back to the nest; 90% of returning foragers