ew; consequently, their abdomens stretch to many times the normal size. Once fed, reservoir ants remain inactive and store honeydew for many months. In many areas of the world, reservoir honey ants are human’s food—they are collected and their abdomens are bitten off. The stored honeydew gives them a candy-like taste.
Honey Ants-Myrmecocystus Spp..
Worker media and replete castes of honey ants. Image courtesy Greg Hume at Wikepedia.
Colonies of these amazing insects develop specialized workers, called repletes or honeypots, with tremendously swollen abdomens for nectar storage. Some repletes also hoard water, fats and body fluid from insect prey. The repletes ingorge on food that is collected outside the nest and brought to them by normally-proportioned worker ants. Deep in underground chambers, the repletes hang quietly in clusters, literally imprisoned by their abdomens ballooned to the size of small grapes (Figure )!
Worldwide there are several very different kinds of ants that exhibit extreme repletism; all are properly called honey ants. One outstanding group; the genus Myrmecocystus, occurs exclusively in western North America. Myrmecocystus contains a diverse ensemblage of at least 28 closely related species, many of which are broadly distributed. It follows that these honey ants are very common insects. Most human residents or visitors to the American Southwest have probably strolled atop a honey ant nest completely unaware of the treasure trove hidden below. But those lucky enough to view repletes first hand can't help but want to find out more about these astonishing creatures.
Honey ants are highly social insects. They live in efficiently organized colonies or groups of cooperating individuals. Their societies are matriarchal or female-dominated families. A typical honey ant colony contains a single fertile queen and thousands of sterile female workers. The queen is the mother of the colony and is specialized for egg production, while the workers, the queen's daughters and hence all sisters, are responsible for colony labor.
Worker honey ants are polymorphic, meaning that they come in different sizes, ranging ten-fold or more in body weight. This variation, in turn, permits more effective task specialization. For example, the smallest workers, called minims, tend to remain in the nest as nursemaids caring for the queen, the developing brood (eggs, larvae and pupae) and the repletes. Medium and larger size workers are more apt to be involved with nest excavation, food acquisition and colony defense. The largest workers, called majors, are the individuals most likely to develop into repletes. Honey ant colonies are coordinated largely by pheromones, glandular secretions produced by the ants that function as chemical signals. Pheromones regulate complex social behavior and broadly serve to identify colony members, recruit nestmates to food sources, and elicit alarm and defensive behaviors. For example, honey ant workers instantly distinguish nestmates from intruders based on their smell (colony odor); the former might be groomed and offered food while the latter would be attacked and killed or driven from the nest.
Honey ant societies may also contain numerous non-working reproductive forms, or winged males and virgin queens. Winged forms, called alates, are produced when colony populations reach an optimal size and become reproductively mature. Then, a portion of the brood raised each year is converted into individuals designed to mate, disperse and start new colonies. Mating flights typically are nocturnal or crepuscular, and generally occur only once a year following the first heavy precipitation of the summer rainy season.
The reproductive forms pour out of the nest and swarm into the air, mating on the fly. Young queens take only one mating flight; they store viable sperm long-term in a special organ, called a spermatheca, which is then used for fertilizing eggs throughout the remainder of their lives.
The males, their primary function completed, die shortly after mating. The inseminated queens drop to the g