Every ant species has varying physical and behavioral characteristics, including body size, weight, habitats, and colony size, that are affected by biological and environmental factors. Silky field ants make their colonies near the plants.
What Size Are Silky Field Ants? The average body length of silky field ants is 5 to 8mm, while their queens and drones can reach 9 to 12mm and 6 to 9mm body length. In addition, the body weight of workers is around 4 to 6mg. Furthermore, diet, caste, and gender affect the size of these ants in a colony.
According to their appearance, they have several other names, like silky mound and black field ants, as their bodies are entirely black and appear glossy.
Ants’ petiole has a single node, while the gaster is bulbous with silvery hair giving their bodies a smooth or silky appearance, which is a reason for their unique name.
What is the average size of silky field ants?
Silky field ants or Formica subsericea have 3-segmented bodies and appear black completely as their abdomen, thorax, head, and legs are black in color.
You can differentiate them from other black ants by light greyish markings on their abdominal region. Moreover, the average body length varies as each colony consists of multiple castes.
Commonly, the workers are almost 5 to 8mm long on average and are the most active colony members. In addition, the queens are approximately 9 to 12mm in body length.
However, the male drone’s body length usually lies between the workers and queens as they are bigger than the workers but smaller than the queen.
Accordingly, the average body length of these drones is around 6 to 9mm, which is considered moderate among the nest members.
This dusky ant can have varying body lengths when these insects do not get enough nutrients during their growth period because it leads to deficiencies in muscle growth.
This ultimately affects their body length, which is directly related to their roles in a colony. The bigger workers usually become soldiers, while the smaller ones become foragers.
What size are silky field ant colonies?
The silky field ants make smaller colonies based on three main castes: queens, workers, and drones. Their colonies consist of almost 500 to 2500 members from every caste.
Workers and queens are females that are considered crucial for the colony due to their roles. Workers are non-fertile and constitute the workforce, but the queens have reproductive potential.
In addition, the drones are male colony members involved in the mating process only and do not play any other role in the colony.
The colonies in the wild contain only one queen and make smaller nests to accommodate only a few thousand members. However, the size can increase for insects living in captivity.
Their polygynous colonies can exceed almost 5000 to 5500 members, including the working force, inactive males, and egg-laying females.
Moreover, these ants’ colonies can also shrink in size when the external conditions are not favorable for their survival and lead to an increased death rate.
Unexpected attacks from predators, unpredicted rainfalls, and the early arrival of cold weather can affect their colonies because they do not get time to work on survival strategies.
How much do silky field ants weigh?
The weight of silky field ants primarily depends on their body size, as bigger members in a colony are heavier than the smaller ones as they have less muscular mass.
On average, their body weight is around 4 to 6mg, which varies according to the changes in their dietary habits and rate of physical activity.
Some inactive members, like males, usually have a lesser activity rate and possess bigger bodies than average members, so their body weight can exceed and falls between 5 to 8mg.
In addition, the queens are bigger than all other castes, have higher body mass, and are ultimately heavier. Their body weight can reach 7 to 9mg on average with a good diet.
Age factor also contributes to weight determinations as young ones are in a phase of growing and gaining muscle mass, so their bodies are usually lighter than adults.
Adults are completely developed organisms whose body mass can only vary when they have a poor diet or increased activity rate.
What factors affect the size of silky field ants?
The size of these ants depends on a few factors, including diet, caste, and gender. Males and females are two genders in an ant colony having varying body sizes.
The reproductive females are bigger than the reproductive males due to their larger abdomen as they have to carry eggs in their bellies and fertilize them.
Three castes are seen in a silky field ant colony, including workers, drones, and queens. The workers and queens are both females, but the workers are sterile insects having smaller bellies.
Accordingly, there is a variation between the two insects belonging to the same gender but having different castes in a colony, which affects their body size.
It is not wrong to assume that castes in a colony are determined by their size and ability to reproduce. Smaller worker ants become foragers, while bigger ones usually become soldiers.
Furthermore, diet is an environmental factor that also contributes to determining the size of an insect because poor nutrition and an unbalanced diet affect their growth patterns.
Larvae need protein-rich food to develop their body mass and grow bigger, but they can remain shorter if they do not get sufficient proteins in their regular diet.
Where are silky field ants found?
The silky field ants are commonly found in Canada and the United States, particularly in the eastern region of America. Their natural habitats include lawns, gardens, and deciduous forests.
Moreover, they also build mounds close to the foundations of buildings, roadsides, sidewalks, and park fields. Their nests are located under the pavement stones and stone walls in the garden.
They make underground nests in soil and build mounds close to the trees because they can easily get food from there without making long trips from trees to their indoor nests.
Most commonly, they build outdoor nests in open places or choose shadowy grasslands to live in. Some of these ants also live in dead or rotting wood and create underground tunnels.
Furthermore, they invade the outer edges of city areas that are dry places because they avoid getting closer to moist places. They need 50 to 55% humidity to survive when living indoors.
In addition, the wild species choose nesting areas by looking for warm and dry areas with almost 69 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
What do silky field ants eat?
Silky field ants are omnivorous insects that eat a variety of sweet food items, particularly sweet juices, like honeydew, released by sap-sucking insects.
They build nests closer to the plants infested with aphids and herd these insects to eat their excreta as they excrete sweet secretions or honeydew.
Aphids living on shrubs and trees can provide a constant food supply to these silky mound ants, protecting them from predators and making them live for a long time.
These mound or thatching insects having glossy black bodies also attack arthropods to feed their colonies. They can kill living insects to add them to their regular diet.
In addition, they also scavenge on dead insects, arthropods, and animals to extract nutrients from their muscle mass, which helps their colonies to grow in size.
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