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ant colony
An ant colony, also called a ''formicary''.〔Merriam-Webster. Online Dictionary. ''()''. retrieved 19 March 2015.〕 is the basic family unit around which ants organize their lifecycle. Ant colonies are eusocial, and are very much like those found in other social Hymenoptera, though the various groups of these developed sociality independently through convergent evolution. The typical colony consists of one or more egg-laying queens, a large number of sterile females ("workers") and, seasonally, a large number of winged sexual males and females. Periodically, swarms of the winged sexuals (known as alates) depart the nest in great nuptial flights. The males die shortly thereafter, along with most of the females. A small percentage of the females survive to initiate new nests.〔
== Supercolonies ==
Until 2000, the largest known ant supercolony was on the Ishikari coast of Hokkaidō, Japan. The colony was estimated to contain 306 million worker ants and one million queen ants living in 45,000 nests interconnected by underground passages over an area of .〔Higashi, S. and K. Yamauchi. ''Influence of a Supercolonial Ant Formica (Formica) yessensis Forel on the Distribution of Other Ants in Ishikari Coast''. ''Japanese Journal of Ecology'', No. 29, 257-264, 1979.〕 In 2000, an enormous supercolony of Argentine ants was found in Southern Europe (report published in 2002). Of 33 ant populations nested along the stretch along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts in Southern Europe, 30 belonged to one supercolony with estimated millions of nests and billions of workers, interspersed with three populations of another supercolony.〔Tatiana Giraud, Jes S. Pedersen, and Laurent Kelle. ''(Evolution of supercolonies: The Argentine ants of southern Europe )''. The National Academy of Sciences, 2002.〕 The researchers claim that this case of unicoloniality cannot be explained by loss of their genetic diversity due to the genetic bottleneck of the imported ants. In 2009, it was demonstrated that the largest Japanese, Californian and European Argentine ant supercolonies were in fact part of a single global "megacolony".〔''(Ant mega-colony takes over world BBC Wednesday, 1 July 2009 10:41 GMT )''.〕
Another supercolony, measuring approximately wide, was found beneath Melbourne, Australia in 2004.〔''(Super ant colony hits Australia )''. BBC News, 2004.〕
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