Life expectancy of ants depends on their look and a caste and also on conditions of accommodation, the habitat and a season. Ant life for length both in 5 days, and in record 20 years is known to the nature.
Ants – the insects living families. They not only divide one housing, but also together solve all problems following at them ways. A lonely ant - a nonsense. It is harmonious group of the sloggers ready to make the feasible contribution to the common cause. Depending on a look, the quantity of individuals in family hesitates from several dozen to several million. Ants which people got used to meet on the way, the working females incapable to fly and breed. Annually to their nests on marriage years there arrive the flying females and males who copulate in air. Males perish, and females, having left behind numerous posterity, dump wings and look for to themselves the permanent residence – an ant hill.
Life expectancy
Working ants live from a year to three years. And if the look smaller, duration of their life is lower, than at larger fellows. Also ants of cold regions live longer than the tropical relatives – in cold season they fall into hibernation, keeping the activity without the uniform movement, and then again with new forces continue existence. Ant males live several weeks for which bring to population the one and only benefit: participate in pairing. Then they are destroyed by an ant hill or get into beaks and paws of predators. The most long-living individual among the ant people – a uterus of ants. Some types live up to 20 years, surpassing life of an average working ant by 15 times.
The factors influencing longevity
Individuals of different types of ants can differ on life expectancy. Workers of a type of faraonovy live about 2 months, and the same workers of a species of bulldogs – up to 5 years. The ants serving as soldiers can longer live, than their ant hill fellows who look after a uterus and posterity. The ants which are not leaving ant hills live much longer than soldiers and furazhir which are forced to leave the place of the dwelling, often perishing before achievement of the age programmed by the nature. Also as well as adult individuals, the larvae of ants living at a cold temperature develop longer, at the expense of it total life of an ant increases. Tropical ants – the most long-living. Their life passes in an ant hill within at most 22 years. The shortest life at small ants which parasitize in others ant hills – only several weeks. In research laboratories the chance to prolong life of a usual working ant up to 3-4 years is high.