Meat ant within a colony is typically favoured as it improves access to forage, as workers deliver most of their food to the nest that is closest to any site they forage in. At any size, a meat ant nest always has a possibility of dying out in any year, but the site may be reoccupied by another colony. Hence, nests can be very old as suggested in one study. Some nests may never be reoccupied for unknown reasons. The regrowth of vegetation which shades the nest, soil damage or even a disease may wipe out a colony and leave the nest
Longhorn crazy ant research station Biosphere 2 in the Arizona Desert, no particular ant species was dominant. By 1996, the longhorn crazy ant had virtually replaced all the other ant species. It fed almost exclusively on the honeydew secreted by the large numbers of scale insects and mealybugs present, and other invertebrates were greatly diminished. The ones that remained were either well armoured, such as millipedes and woodlice, or were tiny and lived underground, such as springtails and mites. The inquiline wingless ant cricket ("Myrmecophilus americanus") is often found living in the nest of the longhorn crazy ant and is kleptoparasitic on it,