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
Meat ant chambers where the population remains during the winter. In the upper areas of the colony, the galleries and shafts only account for 7–10% of nest space. For example, the galleries of excavated colonies occupy whereas the total volume is around . Overall, a nest may dwell extremely deep beneath the soil as excavated nests are as deep as . A diurnal species (active mainly during the day), the meat ant shows minimal interaction with nocturnal ant species when their territories overlap. The meat ant and other members of the "I. purpureus" species group are regarded as a dominant group of