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 encounter each other in. Larger colonies of pavement ants ("Tetramorium caespitum)" can destroy red imported fire ant colonies, leading entomologists to conclude that this conflict between the two species may help impede the spread of the red imported fire ant. Individuals infected by SINV-1 can be killed faster than healthy individuals by "Monomorium chinense". This means that ants infected with SINV-1 are weaker than their healthy counterparts and more than likely will be eliminated by "M. chinense". However, major workers, whether they are infected or not, are rarely killed. In areas it is native to, the red imported fire ant