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 may peacefully coexist and share the honeydew. When encountering neighboring fire ants, workers may take on death-feigning behaviours to avoid them with success. However, such behaviour is only seen in young workers, as older workers either flee or fight back when threatened. As mentioned, red imported fire ants and Argentine ants compete with each other. Mortality rates vary in different scenarios (i.e. mortality rates in colony confrontation is lower than those confronting each other in the field). Major workers can also withstand more injuries to their bodies, thus increasing the mortality rate of Argentine ants. For an Argentine ant colony