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 and the cordate shape seen in the red imported fire ant is absent. The region of the occipital lobes that are situated nearby the midline and occipital excision appear more crease-like in "S. richteri" than it does in the red imported fire ant. The scapes of "S. richteri" are longer than they are in the red imported fire ant, and the pronotum has strong angulate shoulders. Such character is almost absent in the red imported fire ant. A shallow but sunken area is only known in the larger workers of "S. richteri", which is located in the posterior region of