Appearance
The bodies of fire ants, like all insects' bodies, are divided into three sections: the head, the thorax, and the abdomen, with three pairs of legs and a pair of antennae. Fire ants can be distinguished from other ants by their copper brown head and body with a darker abdomen. The worker ants are blackish to reddish, and their size varies from 2 mm to 6 mm (0.12 in to 0.24 in). These different sizes of the ants can all be present in the same nest.
Solenopsis spp. ants can be identified by three body features—a pedicel with two nodes, an unarmed propodeum, and antennae with 10 segments and a two-segmented club.
Many ants bite, and can cause irritation by injecting formic acid; stinging ants have a dedicated venom-injecting sting as well as mandibles.
Read more about this topic: Fire Ant
Famous quotes containing the word appearance:
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—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Though an unpleasant sort of person, and even a queer threatener withal, yet, if one meets him, one must get along with him as one can; for his ignorance is extreme. And what under heaven indeed should such a phantasm as Death know, for all that the Appearance tacitly claims to be somebody that knows much?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
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—Willa Cather (1873–1947)