Ant colony Ant colony An ant colony is the basic unit around which ants organize their lifecycle. Ant colonies are eusocial, and are very much like those found in other social Hymenoptera, though the various groups of these developed sociality independently through convergent evolution. The typical colony consists of one or more egg-laying queens, a large number of sterile females (workers, soldiers) and, seasonally, a large number of winged sexual males and females. In order to establish new colonies, ants undertake nuptial flights that occur at species-characteristic times of the day. Swarms of the winged sexuals (known as alates) depart the nest
Ant mimicry Ant mimicry Ant mimicry or myrmecomorphy is mimicry of ants by other organisms. Ants are abundant all over the world, and potential predators that rely on vision to identify their prey, such as birds and wasps, normally avoid them, because they are either unpalatable or aggressive. Spiders are the most common ant mimics. Additionally, some arthropods mimic ants to escape predation (protective mimicry), while others mimic ants anatomically and behaviourally to hunt ants in aggressive mimicry. In Wasmannian mimicry, mimic and model live commensally together; in the case of ants, the model is an inquiline in the ants' nest. Wasmannian