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 better to give precedence to "S. invicta" over "S. wagneri" whenever an author treated them as conspecific. The ICZN would conserve "S. invicta" and suppress "S. wagneri" in a 2001 review. Under the present classification, the red imported fire ant is a member of the genus "Solenopsis" in the tribe Solenopsidini, subfamily Myrmicinae. It is a member of the family Formicidae, belonging to the order Hymenoptera, an order of insects containing ants, bees, and wasps. The red imported fire ant is a member of the "S. saevissima" species-group. Members can be distinguished by their two-jointed clubs at the end of