Black garden ant
Encyclopedia
Lasius
Lasius Latr. is a genus of boreal formicine ants.Included within this genus is the common black garden ant, Lasius niger, and its close relatives from dry heathland, L. alienus and L. neoniger....
, found all over Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and in some parts of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
. It is monogynous, meaning colonies
Ant colony
An ant colony is an underground lair where ants live, eat and mate. Colonies consist of a series of underground chambers, connected to each other and the surface of the earth by small tunnels. There are rooms for nurseries, food storage, and mating...
have a single queen
Queen ant
A queen ant is an adult, reproducing female ant in an ant colony; generally she will be the mother of all the other ants in that colony. Some female ants do not need to mate to produce offspring, reproducing through asexual parthenogenesis or cloning and all of those offspring will be female.Ant...
.
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| Caste | Monogyn |
| Queen phenotype | 7–9 mm long, colour black |
| Worker phenotype | 3–5 mm long, colour dark brown almost black |
| Soldier phenotype | N/A |
| Nest building | Nests underground, commonly under stones, but also in rotten wood |
| Nutrition | Nectar, small insects, seed Seed A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant... s, will farm Farm A farm is an area of land, or, for aquaculture, lake, river or sea, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibres and, increasingly, fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production. Farms may be owned and operated by a single... aphid Aphid Aphids, also known as plant lice and in Britain and the Commonwealth as greenflies, blackflies or whiteflies, are small sap sucking insects, and members of the superfamily Aphidoidea. Aphids are among the most destructive insect pests on cultivated plants in temperate regions... s |
Lasius niger colonies can reach in size up to around 15,000 workers but 4,000–7,000 is around average. A Lasius niger queen can live for around 12 years.
Lasius niger is host to a number of temporary social parasites of the Lasius mixtus group including Lasius mixtus and Lasius umbratus
Lasius umbratus
Lasius umbratus is a parasitic ant. Queens find a Lasius niger worker ant, kill it to gain its scent and then are able to enter its nest. Once inside it finds and kills the queen. The worker ants will care for her larvae and slowly the colony will become one of Lasius umbratus...
.
Mating flights
Ants mate on the wing, so "flying ants" may be males or immature queens. Mating / nuptial flights of Lasius niger usually occur around June to September throughout the species' range; in North America flights usually occur during the autumn, whereas in Europe they generally take place during the hot summer months of July and August. Flights can contain thousands of winged males and females.Disparities between local weather conditions can cause nuptial flights to be out of phase amongst widespread populations of L. niger. During long-lasting, hot summers, flights can take place simultaneously across the country, but overcast weather with local patches of sunshine results in a far less synchronised emergence of alates (winged individuals).
Once the queens have mated they will land and discard their wings and begin to find a suitable place to dig a tunnel. Meanwhile the males generally only live for a day or two after the mating flights and will then die. Queens live longer than males.
New nest
Once the tunnel has been completed, a queen will block the entrance and retreat to the bottom. Subsequently, the queen will begin to dig out a small chamber; this will serve as the founding chamber of the new colony. Generally, a queen will begin to lay eggs immediately after the construction of the chamber; the eggs will hatch after 8-10 weeks. Until the eggs hatch and grow to maturity, a Lasius niger queen will not eat, relying on the protein of her wing muscles to be broken down and digested. In some cases, a Lasius niger queen may eat her own eggs in order to survive.Egg to ant
Lasius niger have 4 stages of development egg, larva, cocoon and adult. Lasius niger lay tiny, white kidney shaped eggs with a smooth sticky surface which helps them to be carried in a group instead of one by one. After hatching Lasius niger proceed onto the larva stage resembling tiny maggots. The larva need to be fed by the queen (or workers in the case of an established colony) if they are to mature, as they feed the larva grow shedding their skin, doing so usually three times in total. With each molt the larva grow hooked hairs which allows them to be carried in groups. When Lasius niger larva reach the last molt they are generally too big to be carried as part of a group and so are carried singularly. Once the larva grows big enough it spins a cocoon around itself. To aid this process a queen (or workers) may bury the larva so that it can spin its cocoon undisturbed, and begins a process of metamorphosis. Once the process is complete the Lasius niger worker emerges from the cocoon, at this stage Lasius niger is completely white but will darken over the course of an hour until it has turned black.Colony established
The first workers that emerge are very small compared to later generations. At this point the workers immediately begin to expand the nest and care for the queen and brood, they eventually remove the seal from the entrance to the nest and begin to forage above ground. This is a crucial time for the colony as they need to gather food quickly to support future growth and particularly to feed the starved queen, who would have lost around 50% of her body weight. From this point on the queen's egg laying output will increase significantly, becoming the queen's sole function. The later generations of worker ants will be bigger, stronger and more aggressive, reason being dependent on the amount of nutrition Lasius niger receives at the larva stage. The initial brood being fed only by the scarce resources available to a queen will be much smaller than brood supported by a team of foraging and nursing workers. Provided workers are able to find food at this stage the colony will see an exponential rise in population. After several years once the colony is well established the queen will lay eggs that will become queens and males. Black ants often make large nests with extensive tunnel connections.In the garden
This type of ant is a problem for some gardeners. They will farm aphidAphid
Aphids, also known as plant lice and in Britain and the Commonwealth as greenflies, blackflies or whiteflies, are small sap sucking insects, and members of the superfamily Aphidoidea. Aphids are among the most destructive insect pests on cultivated plants in temperate regions...
s for the honeydew
Honeydew (secretion)
Honeydew is a sugar-rich sticky liquid, secreted by aphids and some scale insects as they feed on plant sap. When their mouthpart penetrates the phloem, the sugary, high-pressure liquid is forced out of the gut's terminal opening. Honeydew is particularly common as a secretion in the Hemipteran...
they excrete by bringing them inside the nest and bringing them back out again when necessary. The ants will also eat ripe fruits, especially fruits like strawberries
Strawberry
Fragaria is a genus of flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae, commonly known as strawberries for their edible fruits. Although it is commonly thought that strawberries get their name from straw being used as a mulch in cultivating the plants, the etymology of the word is uncertain. There...
that lack a thick protective skin. Often they can be found on discarded chewing gum
Chewing gum
Chewing gum is a type of gum traditionally made of chicle, a natural latex product, or synthetic rubber known as polyisobutylene. For economical and quality reasons, many modern chewing gums use rubber instead of chicle...
. Lasius niger also feed on insects and spiders, and other small invertebrates. In Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
they are usually referred to as pismires, an archaic term for an ant.