Fire ant queens. Even if only one queen survives, within a month or so, the colony can expand to thousands of individuals. Some colonies may be polygynous (having multiple queens per nest). Fire ants are resilient and can survive floods. During Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017, clumps of fire ants, known as rafts, were seen clumped together on the surface of the water. Each clump had as many as 100,000 individual ants, which formed a temporary structure until finding a new permanent home. Fire ant queens, the reproductive females in their colony, also are generally the largest. Their primary function is
Red imported fire ant suppressed. Between "Tapinoma melanocephalum" and "Pheidole fervida", the red imported fire ant is stronger than both species but shows different levels of aggression. For example, they are less hostile towards "T. melanocephalum" in contrast to "P. fervida". Mortality rates in "T. melanocephalum" and "P. fervida" when fighting with red imported fire ants are high, being 31.8% and 49.9% respectively. The mortality rate for red imported fire ant workers, however, is only 0.2% to 12%. The imported crazy ant ("Nylanderia fulva") exhibits greater dominance than the red imported fire ant and has been known to displace them in habitats where they