The red wood ant (Formica rufa) belongs to the ant family (Formicidae) and is commonly found in the forest environment. It prefers pine forests and builds its nests in places that receive lots of sunlight. Red wood ants create monogyne colonies, that is—with one queen. Initially the queen has wings, but she loses them after the mating flight. Apart from her wings, the queen differs from the worker ants in size. The queen, as well as a male who also has wings, ranges from 9 to 11 mm in size, and a worker ant ranges from 6 to 9 mm.

A Red wood ant has compound eyes, antennae, and a large-powerful mandible. Its head and thorax are reddish in color, whereas its legs and abdomen are brownish. Its legs are long, and its petiole, the space between the thorax and the abdomen, has an appendix known as a husk.

Red wood ants perform a janitorial function in the forest—they remove dead animal remains and kill insect larvae, thus keeping the populations from over reproducing.

Red wood ants are able to build a meter high mound using needles from spruce trees.

Ant expert!

Take a close look at our model of a red wood ant. It was developed with a scale of 100:1? This means that the model is 100 times larger than the size of a real ant!

Psst!

In Poland, Red wood ants are a partially protected species.