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 the United States. Despite its spread, "S. geminata" has a greater geographical range than the red imported fire ant, but it can be easily displaced by it. Because of this, almost all of its exotic range in North America has been lost and the ant has almost disappeared there. On roadsides in Florida, 83% of these sites had "S. geminata" present when the red imported fire ant was absent, but only 7% when it is present. This means that the ant can probably invade many tropical and subtropical regions where "S. geminata" populations are present. Red imported fire ants are