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 is still a dominant species and coexists with 28 ant species in gallery forest gaps and ten species in xerophytic forest grassland, winning most aggressive interactions with other ants. However, some ants can be co-dominant in areas where they coexist such as the Argentine ant, where they compete symmetrically. Workers regularly engage in food competition with other ants, and can suppress the exploitation of food resources from honeydew-producing hemipterans (specifically from "Phenacoccus solenopsis") from native ants; however, red imported fire ants are unable to eliminate "T. melanocephalum" completely although they consume a higher proportion of food. Instead, the two ants