Costa Rica Ants

Of the 500 000 species of animals that Costa Rica has, 300 000 belong to the insect family. Probably the ant species is the one that can seem more easily mainly because it’s one of the most abundant species that can be found in Costa Rica. Ants are related to bees and wasps and they also pass through the four life cycles (egg, larva, pupae, and adult) as butterflies. It has been estimated that each hectare in a dense Costa Rica rainforest can be home to about nine million ants. So you can be sure that if you visit the Costa Rica rainforest you are due to see ants. The most interesting characteristic about ants is they are social creatures that behave as a sole organism that achieves to survive and protect their larvae thanks to the well developed and organized working system. Ants are mostly blind and rely on their noses to follow pheromone trails that scout ants leave behind to mark trails from the nest to food sources. Pheromones are also released to signal dangerous treats around the area. The queen ant is so important to a colony that if she dies the entire colony cannot subsist. The reason for this is that the queen is the only fertile ant in the colony, being able to lay 50 000 eggs once a year, meaning her only goal in her 20 year span of life is to lay eggs. In Costa Rica the queen ant usually begins laying eggs during the rainy season, especially during the months of May and June. From those 50 000 eggs about a fifth will become queens and the rest are males. Queen ants are like a thousand times bigger than the average worker ant and they usually live up to 20 years.

When queen and male ants mature and grow wings and synchronize to mate in a large scale orgy. The queen ants mate several times and store the sperm which will be used throughout their life. The male dies shortly after mating as they only exist to fertilize the queens. Just after mating the fertilized queen ant pulls her wings and starts looking for an appropriate underground hole to bury herself and lay her eggs. In general, only about 1% of the fertilized queens are able to establish a colony. The only purpose the entire colony has it to feed and take care of the larvae, due to the fact that if the larvae die the colony cannot guarantee a long term survival. A colony will need an approximate of a year to start producing soldier ants that will be able to protect the colony. If the colony manages to survive for three more years then it will produce queens and males and thus continuation will be guaranteed.

Costa Rica does not have an army as you might now but it does have an amazingly destructive army of ants. Army ants are absolutely an impressive Costa Rica insect, you will see them marching like soldiers (thus their name) through the Costa Rica rainforests looking for small creatures that could serve them as prey. Once a vulnerable small rainforest creature has been spotted they organize a massive attack on it and in a short amount leave nothing of it but the bones. Army ant produce a quiet hissing sound while they are marching. Some indigenous tribes of Costa Rica learn to use the army ant to stitch wounds. They will place the army ant with the jaws over the wound and gave it squeeze that automatically made the army ant bite into the flesh and press it together.

The other species of ants that can be found in the lowland forests of Costa Rica in large numbers and that is equally interesting as the army ant is the leaf cutting ant. Leaf cutting ants don’t eat the leaves that they fiercely chop from plants and leaves. They chop and literally banish any green parts of the plant, leaving only brown bark and take it to their underground nest. Once the leaves are inside the nest another type of ants mulch the leaves to form compost that is destined to feed a mushroom that grows inside the nest. What the leaf cutting ants leave is not the mushroom itself but the tiny white fruit like product the mushroom produces. This long term symbiosis has been going on for so long and is so strong that this mushroom has stopped producing sexual spores and totally relies on its symbiosis with the leaf cutting ants to stay alive. Mushrooms are assured their permanence in the Costa Rica rainforest by the process in which the new queens that spawn from the nest take a piece of it and use it to establish their own mushroom cultivation once they make their own nest.

There are types of ants on the leaf cutting ant species. The queen which can be as big as five centimeters long, the medias which are the workers that trail back and forth from the nest to plants with pieces of leaves, the soldiers which are mean looking ants with a large head and large jaws that protect the workers fiercely with their lives and also keep the trail clean, last the minor workers which are in charge of mulching the leaves and feeding it to the mushroom. The minors also check the leaves to make sure there are no parasitic phorid flies eggs on them, as these could hatch inside the nest and start feeding on the larvae.

Next time you visit the amazing Costa Rica rainforests make sure to pay more attention to the little creatures around you as they unravel incredible living behavior patterns that will leave you marveled.