Male Argentine Ant
Although Argentine ants may appear similar to other ant species, they exhibit a different social order, mode of communication, feeding habits and roles for each ant in a colony. As a result, they are popular with researchers and hobbyists.
Argentine Ants Crawling
Male Argentine ants hatch from the queen's unfertilized eggs. A male Argentine ant can live up to one year, and the single function of a male Argentine ant is to mate with the queen to preserve and proliferate the colony.
Because an adult Argentine ant has an extremely thin esophagus, it is unable to swallow solid food items. Argentine ants have developed a unique feeding technique. Worker ants bring back solid food items and feed them to the larvae. The larvae digest the food particles and then regurgitate liquid food for workers to distribute. Argentine colonies can become cooperative, especially in the summer.
The newest Argentine workers become nurses whose role is to take care of the colony's eggs, larvae, and pupae until they become adults. Other ants in the Argentine colony build and maintain the nest. Other female Argentine ants tend aphids, collecting the honeydew secreted by these insects for the colony's food.
Unlike other ant species, Argentine ants do not participate in mating flights, called swarms. Instead, the male argentine ant mates with the fertile females inside the nest. These females become queens. They leave the nest on foot with a group of workers to begin new colonies. While queens of other ant species will independently search for a new site to establish a colony, the Argentine ant queen can establish her new colony in close proximity to her original colony. Often the new colony's burrow will become connected to burrow of the original colony. At times, these neighboring colonies will share workers.