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
Pharaoh ant Pharaoh ant is a polygynous species that has a relatively low worker to queen ratio of around 12.86. This allows the pharaoh ants to be able to exert social control over the size of the colony and the size of each caste. In the average nest, there are around 170 ± 8 queens every nest, which comprises around 5.2% of the total population, whereas there are around 2185 ± 49 workers, which make up around 66.6% of the population. This low worker to queen ratio is usually associated with swift changes in the nest and may be why pharaoh ants