WE BUILT THIS CITY

WOOD ANT NESTS - Discover a mini metropolis housing hundreds of thousands of social insects

- Mike Dilger's

BRITAIN'S ANT FAUNA OF ABOUT 50 species is impoverished when compared to that of the tropics, with the famous biologist and ant expert E O Wilson once stating he could find as many species of ant on a single tree in the Peruvian Amazon as exist in the whole of the UK. However, what we lack in quantity we certainly make up for in quality, with wood ants surely the most charismatic of this instantly recognised but poorly understood group of social insects.

Of the six species of British wood ant, only three are commonly encountered: these being the southern, northern hairy and Scottish wood ant. While all look similar, they can be differentiated by the shape of and amount of hair on their heads. And except for a few places where the commonest species may overlap, perhaps the easiest way to know which wood ant species you're trying to identify is to consider its location.

The only true woodland ants in Britain, wood ants are also the largest, with many of the workers reaching about 10mm in length. They also form the most populous colonies, with some nests thought to contain over a quarter of a million individuals, with all being the progeny of a single egg-laying queen. Reaching well over a metre in height, their domed nests on the forest floor are an impressive sight, and perhaps even more so when you realise that the structure may well extend by as much again below ground.