The benefits of ants in the garden
Many gardeners and gardeners consider these insects to be harmful. But it is not so. What benefits do ants bring to the soil? By building anthills at a depth of up to one and a half meters, they perfectly loosen the soil, mixing it at a depth of fifty to seventy centimeters. Ants lift soil particles from the lower layers to the surface. Such soil allows air and water to pass through better, nourishing the roots of plants.
If black ants appear on your summer cottage, there is no need to worry about the soil. It is healthy, warmed up, enriched with oxygen, sufficiently moisturized and broken into small lumps. With the help of ants, the decomposition of individual minerals occurs. What benefits do ants bring? The activity of these insects helps remove greenhouse gases. Ants help enrich the soil with humus and minerals such as phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, magnesium; they reach the plants in a form accessible to them. The area with an anthill located on it is ideal for growing flowers, fruit trees and shrubs.
What do ants eat?
What benefits do ants bring? They happily eat caterpillars, worms, and slugs, which cause irreparable harm to plants. Insects inject formic acid into their prey, paralyzing the victim. The diet of ants is not limited to this. It includes fruits and seeds, herbs and juice. But most of all, ants love to feast on the sweet secretions of aphids.
What benefits do ants bring to nature? They destroy intrusive aphids. Ants are associated with these insects by food symbiosis: they transfer aphids from one plant to another. At this time, they themselves are nearby and protect the “herd” of aphids from attacks by flies, lacewings, and beetles. This is how ants store food for the winter.
The role of food for ants
The food of insects is a significant factor in their “political” life. It plays the role of uniting ants into a single mechanism of natural society. An ant will never eat its prey secretly from its relatives. He will run to the anthill and transfer food to his fellow colony member. The ant shares its prey with other inhabitants of the family and feeds the larvae. This food is enough for about a hundred individuals. The enzymes in its composition serve as a variety of signals.
The anthill is “heated” with food. At the beginning of spring, to prevent the young animals from dying, it is necessary to raise the temperature in the places where they accumulate. What benefits do ants bring to prevent the death of the larvae? They are grouped into balls. At this time of year, carbohydrates that come from food stored for the winter are intensively oxidized in their bodies. This process is accompanied by the release of heat.
Life in an anthill
Ants live in families (colonies) in anthill nests, which are built in the ground, wood, and under stones. Ants are organized creatures. A family (colony) is a complex structure with a clear division of responsibilities between its members.
Like all “social insects,” ants are divided into 3 castes :
- females (queens or queens). They lay eggs (males emerge from unfertilized eggs, females emerge from fertilized eggs). The queens have wings, which they chew off immediately after the mating flight. Female ants differ in size from other inhabitants of the anthill; they are much larger than males and worker ants. The queen is the only long-lived colony;
- males . Their only function is to participate in mating. Later they are destroyed by their own relatives from the anthill. Males are much smaller in size than females, but also have wings. Their lifespan is only a few weeks;
- worker ants (foragers). These are the same females, only with an underdeveloped reproductive system. The responsibilities of foragers include caring for the family, food and future offspring. They have no wings and are much smaller in size than the female. Large-sized workers are soldier ants (they have more developed jaws and a large head); they also perform all the duties of workers, but, among other things, protect their nest from attacks by enemies.
REFERENCE! Mating occurs in a female only once; the resulting sperm is enough for her to reproduce offspring throughout her life (10-20 years).
REFERENCE! Not all types of ants have a clear division into castes.
For example, garden black and pharaoh ants build a “career” for themselves: from birth they care for their offspring, then they arrange the anthill and only at the end of their lives they obtain food.
How are ants useful in the forest?
People often underestimate ants, considering them useless. But this is not at all true, Ants are the most useful inhabitants of the forest. When talking about these insects, one should remember about their collecting and predatory activities. Having settled in wood that has died for some reason, ants contribute to its mechanical destruction. They crawl around the area around the nest for a reason.
Ants are constantly searching for wood and grass particles: twigs, pine needles, scales, blades of grass and other forest debris. They take all this to the anthill. Here these particles decompose much faster than on any surface. Along with them, dead wood begins to rot and decompose. A forest is not a summer cottage, and it is simply impossible to manually clear it of all rubbish. This is what the ants do. It’s not for nothing that they are called forest orderlies.
So what benefit do ants bring to the forest? They clear it of diseased, rotten and destroyed trees. In the forest it is impossible to find large concentrations of harmful insects in the habitats of ants. For reference: the population of a two-meter-high anthill successfully fights against harmful insects in a forest area exceeding one hectare. There are forests where ants are introduced artificially.
What benefits do ants bring? They help increase the biological activity of the soil, enriching it with oxygen and substances useful for plant growth. The ants themselves provide food for many birds, such as woodpeckers, tits, wood grouse, and black grouse. Birds also love to take “ant baths.” They “dive” into the anthill and tuck its inhabitants under their wings. In this way, birds are freed from parasites.
What is an anthill
Many of us have come across a large anthill in the forest. Sometimes its height can reach up to 2 m. Forest red ants build such cone-shaped shelters from the ground, small twigs, and food debris carried outside. As a result, the anthill does not get wet even during heavy rain.
Anthill and ants The waterproof outer part of the ant house allows you to maintain the required level of humidity inside. The consequence of this is the smoldering and decomposition of those plant elements from which this structure is composed, which actually contributes to the heating of the ant’s home. The red forest ant is a real clean ant; it regularly cleans its home of unnecessary food debris, dry egg shells, and dead individuals.
When the necessary microclimate is maintained in a structure that has reached a certain size, working individuals of red ants begin to build chambers inside it for keeping larvae, storing food and wintering. Such forest structures bring great benefits to the environment: the soil is enriched with useful substances and its structure is improved. Stumps in which ants live smolder and decompose much faster.
What benefits do ants bring to people?
Even in ancient times, people knew about the beneficial properties of formic alcohol, which is secreted by insects. Today, modern medicine uses this gift of nature for medicinal purposes. What benefits do ants bring to humans? Medicines are produced based on formic alcohol.
They treat diseases such as tuberculosis, bronchial asthma, hepatitis, kidney failure, and diabetes. In folk medicine, tinctures are prepared from live and dried forest ants, which are used to treat neuralgia and many joint diseases. Insects are collected in mid-summer. Red ants are suitable for medicine.
Peculiarities
Red ants, or as they are also called red forest ants, prefer to settle in coniferous, deciduous or mixed forests. According to the description, this is an ordinary ant: it differs from the domestic red pest ant, which often gets into the house, only in size. Densely built insects can reach up to 14 mm in size. The underside of the head and chest are reddish-brown, the ventral part is black and shiny.
Red ants have a convex trapezoidal clypeus and 2 pairs of membranous wings. On the head there are compound eyes that do not have good vision. Long antennae act as an organ of touch. The presence of a stereoscopic sense of smell allows the insect to perceive aromas three-dimensionally. The stalk-shaped abdominal part hides a gland filled with a special secret substance. The powerful muscles of an ant are capable of expelling secretions over ten centimeters. A photo of forest red ants is presented below.
Forest red ants Anatomical differences in forest red ants are clearly expressed: black winged males have yellow or red legs. They have a more elongated abdomen and a small head. A distinctive feature of females is the red-brown color of the head, chest and abdomen.
On a note!
The presence of wings in females is observed only during the mating season. After mating, the females chew them off, resulting in weakening of the corresponding muscles.
The mirror-black abdomen has a rounded shape. Working individuals are the smallest, their body length does not exceed 9 mm. They lack wings, but have mandibles.
A little about toads
When cultivating a plot of land, you can often see clumsy toads slowly crawling to the side. Many people, unfortunately, are disgusted by them. But toads, tirelessly exterminating harmful insects, bring benefits to gardens and vegetable gardens. Toads are amphibians. Some of their species, becoming adults, live and get their food exclusively on the ground. The most common are gray or common toads and green amphibians with large spots of the same color. The toad's body is covered with numerous warts.
What do they eat
The main diet of red forest ants is aphids. They also prey on invertebrates such as insects and arachnids. These are voracious scavengers. Ant trails can extend up to 100 m.
Find out more Formicarium for ants, features of maintenance and feeding
Larger workers forage further from home. F. rufa is used in forestry, often used as a form of pest control.
Amphibian Nutrient Environment
Toads eat animal food: harmful insects, beetles, bedbugs, ants. Their menu doesn't stop there. They eat pests such as mole crickets, wireworms, weevils, Colorado potato beetle larvae, and caterpillars with great appetite. Young toads are not aggressive; they are quite happy with every little thing: aphids, mosquitoes, crimson beetles and weevils. During the day, one adult eats about eight grams of insects.
What benefits do ants and toads bring? Amphibians destroy two to three times more pests than insectivorous birds. They do not refuse parasites with a bad smell and bad taste, which birds disdain. Toads are better at hunting pests whose body color blends with the natural background. Birds sleep at night, and amphibians hunt at this time. Their prey is insects that lead a nocturnal life: cutworm butterflies, caterpillars, moths, slugs.
