Re: How do ants react to light and temperature?

Dear Jamie,

All of the ants belong to an incredibly diverse family of insects called Formicidae. There are over 4,500 species of ants described by scientists so far, and a large number are still waiting to be discovered and described. Because of all the diversity, it's hard to give an exact temperature or amount of sunlight for the optimal growth of ants, unless you already know the species you have.

Many people enjoy keeping ant farms. In trying to keep the ants alive as long as possible, these Myrmecologists (that's the name of anyone who studys ants) try to optimize all of the conditions they can control. If this is the purpose of your question, I can give you some good hints about how to figure out the general conditions you want for your own species of ants, plus recommend a simple experiment you can use to figure out the best temperature for the species you collected.

First let's think about temperature. Insects are considered cold blooded animals. This means that they can't control the temperature of their bodies very easily. Because of this, ants are usually specialized to grow best in the specific climate that they are naturally found in. If you know where the ants are from, you can simply find the temperature range of that area, and use that as a good guess for optimal temperature. A difficulty here is that most areas of the world have seasonal temperature changes. Which season should you mimic for your ants? If you collected the ants from your own neighborhood, simply figure out when the greatest numbers of foraging ants are out scouting for food.

Here's a simple experiment you could do to figure out the optimal temperature for the ants in your neighborhood:

Materials:
loose-leaf sheets of paper
pancake syrup
journal
watch or clock
thermometer (optional)

Procedure:

Pick a spot near your home where you can normally find ants scouting for food. Late in the afternoon, place a sheet of paper flat on the ground. In the center of the paper place a drop of maple syrup. Start timing as soon as the drop of syrup is placed on the paper. Now count the number of ants that come to the drop of syrup for the next thirty minutes and write it in your journal. If you have a thermometer with you, write down the temperature too. If you don't have a thermometer, then get a guess at what the temperature by looking in a daily newspaper or looking up the temperature for your city on the Internet at: www.weather.com

After you have repeated this experiment many different days at many different temperatures, you will be able to see which temperatures makes your local ants most active. Many ants are hardy animals, and can work well at a wide range of temperatures. If you are considering having an ant farm, you could just keep them at room temperature until you found the optimal temperature through scientific experimentation.

Now let's think about what light conditions are best for ants. Light strongly influences many insects. Animals that live under the ground don't usually get much light down in their living chambers. You might expect that ants in an ant farm would strongly object to having their tunnels and chambers exposed to light. However, I couldn't find any information on the effects of artificially exposing ant chambers to light.

My work with subterranean termites (termites which live underground) show that reaction to light might depend strongly on what species you have. I worked with two closely related species. One species quickly covered all of the clear tubing we kept them in with dirt to prevent light from getting in. The other species kept the tubes clear. My guess is that different ant species would also have very different reactions to light. I have a feeling that most ants won't much mind light in their chambers. I have seen two huge ant farms, and neither colony seemed to be shielding out light. One was at the National Zoo in Washington DC, and one was at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University in Massachusetts. If you ever have the chance I'd highly recommend visiting both!

During my web searches I turned up a page with general information on ant biology and another site with a description of acorn ants that might also interest you.

Best of luck!

John