Ants’ nuptial flight

This time yearly, clouds of winged ants arise from their nests for the brief saturnalia known as nuptial flight. The winged ants are the reproductive males and females of a nest, which take flight to mate. The winged ants are the reproductive males and females of the colony, which grow wings for their brief flight. They mate in the air or on the ground, then the successful females fly off as future queens and the other females and male go to die. Only .2% of the females are going to be successful at creating new colonies. The benefit in swarming all at once is to overwhelm the predators and give a few an opportunities to succeed.  Over the summer different species of ants have slightly different reproductive periods.  Using published information, there are 92 species of ants in B.C.

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