Ant Keeping Glossary

Acrylic Nest

An ant nest made of clear acrylic layers stacked and screwed together to form the chambers, giving a great view of the colony and an escape-proof, easy-to-clean structure.

Alate

A winged reproductive ant, either a virgin queen or a male, raised by a mature colony to leave the nest during the nuptial flight and mate.

Brood

All the young, developing members of an ant colony: eggs, larvae and pupae. Pupae may be bare or wrapped in a silk cocoon, depending on the species.

Claustral Founding

A way of starting a colony in which the newly mated queen seals herself in a small chamber and raises her first workers without leaving to forage, living on her own body reserves.

Dealate

A queen ant that has shed her wings, usually right after mating during the nuptial flight, as she gets ready to dig a chamber and found a new colony.

Diapause

A programmed resting phase in which an ant colony slows its metabolism, the queen stops laying eggs and brood development pauses, usually triggered by the cold and short days of winter.

Escape Prevention

The barriers and design choices that stop ants from leaving their setup, most often a slippery escape prevention oil brushed around the top of the outworld, plus tight lids and stoppers.

Feeder Insects

Insects and other small invertebrates, such as crickets, mealworms, roaches and fruit flies, offered to ant colonies as protein, which the queen needs to lay eggs and the larvae need to grow.

Foraging

The search for food, water and other resources outside the nest, carried out by worker ants that collect what they find and bring it back to share with the rest of the colony.

Formicarium

An artificial habitat for keeping an ant colony, usually made of a nest where the ants live and raise their brood, connected to an outworld where they find food and water.

Founding Chamber

The small, sealed cavity a newly mated queen digs in soil, wood or under a stone, where she lays her first eggs and raises her first workers. Also called the claustral chamber.

Fungus Garden

A sponge-like mass of fungus that leafcutter ants grow on fresh leaf fragments inside their nest. The ants don't eat the leaves: they feed the fungus, and the fungus feeds the colony.

Gaster

The rounded rear part of an ant's body, behind the waist. It holds the crop, the digestive system, the reproductive organs and, in many species, a stinger or acid gland.

Granary

A nest chamber where harvester ants, like Messor barbarus, store the seeds they collect. It's kept drier than the brood chambers so the seeds don't germinate or go moldy.

Heat Cable

A flexible heating wire placed under or behind part of an ant nest to keep it warm, which speeds up brood development, ideally controlled by a thermostat to avoid overheating.

Hibernation

The period of winter rest that ant keepers give to colonies from temperate climates, keeping them cool for a few months so the queen and the brood can pause, as they would in the wild.

Honeydew

A sugary liquid excreted by aphids and other sap-sucking insects. Many ants, like Lasius niger, collect it as food and protect the aphids in return, almost like farmers with a herd.

Liquid Feeder

A small container placed in the outworld that holds water or sugar water and lets ants drink through tiny holes or a wick, providing a steady supply for days or weeks.

Major Worker

A large worker, usually with an oversized head and strong mandibles, found in species with workers of different sizes. Majors handle heavy jobs like cracking seeds and defense.

Mandibles

The pair of jaws on the front of an ant's head, used to carry brood and food, dig, cut, crack seeds and defend the colony. Their shape varies a lot between species.

Monogyny

A colony structure with only one egg-laying queen. In monogyne species, colonies don't accept extra queens, and adult queens are usually aggressive toward each other.

Nanitic

One of the first workers raised by a founding queen. Nanitics are noticeably smaller than later workers because they grow on the limited food the queen can provide alone.

Nuptial Flight

The mating event in which winged queens and males leave their colonies, often by the thousands, to find partners from other nests, after which the mated queens land to start new colonies.

Outworld

The open area of a formicarium, connected to the nest, where workers go out to find food and water, drop their waste and explore, just as they would forage outside their nest in nature.

Petiole

The narrow waist segment between an ant's thorax and gaster. Some ants have a single petiole, while others have a second segment behind it, called the postpetiole.

Pheromone

A chemical signal released by an ant to communicate with other members of its species, used to mark food trails, raise the alarm, recognize nestmates and attract mates.

Polygyny

A colony structure with more than one egg-laying queen living and working together. Polygynous species can accept several reproductive queens in the same nest.

Polymorphism

The presence of workers of clearly different sizes and shapes in the same colony, such as small minor workers and large, big-headed major workers, often with different jobs.

Sandwich Nest

A nest made of two transparent panels of glass or acrylic held close together, with a thin layer of sand or soil in between where the ants dig their own tunnels and chambers in plain view.

Semi-Claustral Founding

A way of starting a colony in which the newly mated queen cannot rely only on her body reserves and has to leave her chamber to forage for food while raising her first workers.

Social Parasitism

A relationship in which one ant species depends on the colony of another to survive, for example a parasitic queen that takes over a host colony and lets its workers raise her brood.

Substrate

The loose material, such as sand, soil, clay or bark, that covers the floor of an outworld or fills a sandwich or naturalistic nest, giving ants a surface to walk on, dig and keep humid.

Supercolony

A huge network of connected ant nests with many queens, whose workers treat each other as members of one family instead of fighting, sometimes stretching across entire regions.

Test Tube Setup

A simple founding nest made from a test tube with water at the bottom, held back by a cotton plug, giving a queen and her young colony a small, dark and humid chamber.

Trophallaxis

The mouth-to-mouth sharing of liquid food between ants. Foragers store food in their crop, or social stomach, and pass it to nestmates, the queen and larvae.

Tubs and Tubes

A cheap and simple setup in which one or more test tube nests are placed inside an open plastic tub that acts as the outworld, protected by an escape prevention barrier.

Ytong Nest

An ant nest carved into a block of Ytong, a light and porous aerated concrete that holds moisture well and is easy to sculpt, usually closed with a clear front panel.