The ants are marked with paint for easier viewing. When it comes to accurate portrayals of ants, Hollywood has a lot to learn. Scientists once held similar views of ant society, but most have cast aside metaphors of rigid castes and assembly lines in the wake of discovering that ant behavior can be dynamic. How an Insect Society is Organized , presents what she's learned so far. Alates from several colonies somehow converge on a single site, where mating occurs.
Males die soon afterward, but the females fly off and settle elsewhere.
Most have a fatal encounter with predators or other ants, but a few queens manage to dig out a shallow nest, from which they will never emerge. Of some 1,000 new nests that might be scattered over Gordon's study site in a given summer, only 20 to 50 of them survive as young colonies a year later. A successful colony rapidly increases in size and gradually grows more secure. After about five years, the queen needs to crank out at least 10,000 workers a year for the colony to remain stable and able to reproduce by sending out its own alates. A colony may last for 15 years, or as long as the queen lives.