Ice ant

The **ice ant** or **blue imported ice ant** (*Lapilasius remedium*) is a species of predatory ant that originally did not exist, but has since been created by SciiFii and introduced throughout the tundra, alpine, boreal, and temperate environments across North America to help boost biodiversity and to control or regulate invasive fire ants. Colonies may be quite large, accommodating as many as 100,000 to 600,000 adult individuals. Each colony consists of a single queen, a brood of developing young, and many adult workers. The adult workers make up the majority of the population. There are four distinct physical worker castes. The queen usually copulates with 10–20 males, which leads to a colony with a large number of worker patrilines, which are full-sibling families with the same father and mother. When a colony's size reaches a maximum, it can result in a split in the colony, with the old queen heading one resultant swarm and a daughter heading the other. This species displays a high degree of worker polymorphism. Sterile workers are of four discrete size-castes: minors, medias, porters (sub-majors), and soldiers (majors). Soldiers have much larger heads and specialized mandibles for defense. In lieu of underground excavated nests, colonies of ice ants form temporary living nests known as bivouacs, which are composed of hanging live worker bodies and which can be disassembled and relocated during colony emigrations. Ice ant colonies cycle between stationary phases and nomadic phases when the colony emigrates nightly. These alternating phases of emigration frequency are governed by coinciding brood developmental stages. Group foraging efforts known as "raids" are maintained by the use of pheromones, can be 200 metres (660 ft) long, and employ up to 200,000 ants. Workers are also adept at making living structures out of their own bodies to improve efficiency of moving as a group across the ground while foraging or emigrating. Workers can fill "potholes" in the foraging trail with their own bodies, and can also form living bridges. Besides being group predators, preying on a wide range of invertebrates, members of an ice ant colony cycle between nomadic and stationary (or "statary") phases. During the twenty-day stationary phase, the pupae and newly laid eggs develop, and the colony goes on raids about every other day. During the fifteen-day nomadic phase, initiated after the eggs hatch and the pupae eclose, the colony goes on raids once every day. Each raid requires approximately one third of the colony, employing up to 200,000 members. The raids can be up to 20 meters in width and 200 meters in length. The raids never occupy the same area twice, so the trail to each new location is always changing. Ice ant colonies avoid locations where they and other colonies have already foraged. This way, they ensure that there are available resources in their foraging area and they avoid any aggressive conspecific encounters. The inbound ants on the trail deliver prey that was captured by the outbound swarming ants. Ice ant raids move as a loose swarm over the ground. This allows for smaller prey to take shelter in the crevices of the leaf litter to hide from the oncoming ants. Since numerous insects and other small prey can escape the swarm, the frequent raids of the ants do not desecrate an area's prey reserves. This chronic predation by the colonies will evolutionarily favor insects and other prey that possess adaptions to counteract the ants, such as chemical weaponry for defense or those that sexually mature at a smaller size. Since the larger ice ants require more prey for energy than other smaller ant colonies, only high biomass patches of prey will provide them with enough food. If the prey density in an area is too small, the colony may be forced to abandon the area and move on. During their raids, ice ants have also been known to predate wasp nests of species such as European paper wasps (*Polistes dominula*). These attacks often involve the destruction of the wasp nest as ice ants consume the larva and pupa. Ice ants are also known to prey on wasp species like eastern yellowjackets (*Vespula maculifrons*) – they are the most severe predators of the wasp and their raids have the most devastating of results. The eastern yellowjacket' only mode of defense from these ice ant raids is attempting to find more elusive nesting locations. Ice ant colonies use pheromones to maintain a straight foraging pathway. The ants can detect the pheromones with their antennae and can tell the difference in concentration gradients of the pheromones as they move away from the center of the trail. Also, individuals who are outbound, turn to avoid the inbound ants more frequently, giving the prey-burdened ants the right-of-way on the trail. Members of the species have been observed to use their bodies to fill potholes in the pathway between the nest and prey. By filling these obstacles, the ice ants greatly increase the overall prey-laden traffic back to the nest. Each ice ant will walk to a hole and measure itself to see if it fits; if it does, it will lie across the hole motionless to allow other members of the colony to cross at a higher speed. If it does not fit, it will continue past the hole and allow another ant to check. Ice ants will also cooperate, with multiple ants forming a plug, if one ant is too small for the hole. Once in place in a hole, the ant(s) can stay there for many hours or until it is dark and the traffic flow has diminished greatly, at which point they will return to the nest. An increase in trail speed and efficiency leads to a larger daily prey intake by the colony. This raises the colony's collective fitness, allowing for faster reproduction. Unlike its close relative, the highly invasive fire ant, ice ants have rather weak bites, but they have special proteins in their glands to cure the venom from fire ant bites with the sting in their jaws, which is described as feeling like an ice-pack. The conservation status of the ice ant is **Not Evaluated**, although it may be considered as **Least Concern**, due to successful conservation efforts, the ice ant's wide range and its tolerance to many of the human activities.