Ants

Anatomy
In relation to their size, ants are extremely strong. They are able to pick up more than 50 times their own body weight. This would be the same as a human picking up a car.
Ants have a tiny waist, which separates the thorax from the abdomen and in comparison to the rest of their body they have very large heads with big jaws, which move sideways to chew. They have six legs, each of which has three joints.
Ants have two stomachs, one to hold food for them to eat themselves, the other they use to share food with other ants. This allows some ants to stay and look after the nest whilst the other ants forage for food.
Ants do not have lungs. They breathe through small holes around their bodies called ‘spiracles’. This helps them to survive underwater for over 24 hours.
Most ants have poor eyesight and communicate by using their antennae. Their antennae have joints like elbows. They use the antennae not only to feel their way but also to smell things. They use their mandibles for holding things, cutting, digging and fighting.

Habitat
Most species of ants live in tropical regions such as the Amazon Rainforest but ants can be found all over the world. They build nests underground, in ground-level mounds known as anthills, or in trees and plants with naturally occurring hollows. Their nests contain hundreds of tunnels and rooms.
Some ants will use their heads to plug tunnel exits to stop intruders getting into the nest.

Diet
Adult ants can not swallow solid food. They chew leaves, crumbs and dead insects into a soft pulp, squeeze out the juice and throw away the remains.
Ants also live off of sap-sucking insects, like aphids. They farm aphids for their nectar by herding the aphids to plants with the best sap and moving them inside when it rains. Studies have shown the ants will clip off the aphids’ wings to prevent them from flying away. The ants stroke the aphids’ backs with their antennae to encourage them to produce honeydew droplets.

Lifecycle
Ants were around with the dinosaurs. An ant lives about 40 – 60 days, although some species can live up to thirty years. Most ants are females. They are called workers. It is their job to look for food, look after the young, clean and defend the nest.
Male ants are called drones and their only function is to mate with the princess. The princess and the drones have wings as mating is usually done during flight and is known as the nuptial flight.
The princess will lose her wings after mating and find a suitable place to nest as the queen of a new colony. The drones die after mating. The queen will lay her eggs and lick them to encourage them to hatch. She feeds the young with her own saliva.
When a queen ant dies the whole colony will usually perish.

Behaviour
Ants are more important than earthworms for turning the soil.
Ants do sleep. They hibernate for around four months in the winter. They also take short naps of about a minute throughout the day. They can have over 250 ‘sleep episodes’ in one day.
When an ant finds a suitable source of food it immediately takes the most direct route back to the nest, leaving a scent trail so other ants can find the food. The ants will travel back and forth along the trail until all the food has gone.

Different Species
There are about thirty-five thousand different species of ant in the world. Some interesting facts about some of the different species are:

• Red ants
Red ants have a stinger, which they use to defend their nest.

• Wood ants
Wood ants do not have a stinger but they are able to squirt acid from the end of their abdomens to protect the nest. These ants can live up to ten years. They make their anthills out of twigs, leaves and soil.

• Army ants
Army ants do not have nests as they are always on the move. They carry their eggs and larvae with them as they march in single-file across long distances.

Bees

Anatomy
Bees have six legs, four wings, nectar pouches and five eyes. The two rear wings are small and attached to the forewings with tiny hooks.
The two eyes either side of their head are compound eyes made up of thousands of lenses, the other three eyes are in the middle of their head and help the bee navigate whilst flying. They can’t see many colours. Their sight is limited to the blue – green colour spectrum. Red appears as black. However, they are able to see ultraviolet light, which helps them find flowers. Using these unique eyes they are also able to recognise people’s faces.
They carry their nectar pouches on their back legs. These pouches are made of stiff, curved hairs.
The stinger is covered in tiny barbs so when a bee uses its stinger, it detaches from their abdomen and they die.

Habitat
Honey bees live in large colonies in hives which they keep very tidy. There can be over 20,000 bees in a colony with one queen. The hive is made from a mixture of beeswax and resin collected from trees. Beeswax is secreted from wax producing glands in the bee’s abdomen. Inside the hive are perfect hexagonal combs made of beeswax called honeycomb. The queen lays her eggs and the workers store honey and pollen in the honeycomb.
In comparison, bumblebees live in underground burrows that have been discarded by mice or other small rodents. The nests have several entrances and are approximately 30cm wide.

Diet
Bees feed on nectar and pollen from flowering plants. Nectar is a sugary liquid that gives bees energy. As it collects this nectar and pollen it pollinates the plants, which helps them to grow. The nectar and pollen is used to make honey. The honey will feed the bees throughout the whole year.
Birds, frogs and newts eat bees.

Lifecycle
A queen can live up to five years. If a queen dies, the workers select a newly-hatched-larvae and feed it royal jelly so it will grow into a replacement queen. The bees make royal jelly by mixing pollen and honey with a special chemical produced by a gland in the nursing bees’ heads.
The queen’s role is to lay eggs. She also produces special chemicals which influence the other bees’ behaviour. She lays her eggs in small batches on a ball of pollen covered by wax. The larvae will feed on the pollen as they grow. The queen will sit on her eggs to keep them warm until the first workers are born.
Workers are all female. It takes about three weeks for them to be born. It is their job to collect food, build and protect the hive, clean and circulate the air by beating their wings. Adult worker bees will live about four weeks. However, some die in as little as five days. It can take about five weeks for a worker bee to become adult.
The male bees are called drones. It is their job to mate with the queen. A queen will only mate once with each male. In the winter the drones are thrown out of the hive.

Behaviour
Bees will fly the shortest route possible between flowers and can fly over 25km an hour. Their wings beat over 200 times a second. However, they can not fly if they are too cold (below 30˚C). They use the sun and other landmarks to find their way.
They have an excellent sense of smell to help them recognise different varieties of flowers. Each colony has its own odour so the bees know where they live. As well as using their sense of smell to communicate bees can communicate by dancing. The faster the dance the more food there is.
Bees use a process known as buzz pollination to pollinate plants, such as tomatoes. They do this by producing a high-pitched buzz whilst holding on to the plant.

Different species
There are over 20,000 different species of bee worldwide, which vary in colour. Some have bands of red and black, some yellow and black, some orange and black, or even white and black. Bumblebees and honey bees are the two most common species and they have many differences between them:

• Honey bees
Honey bees have a barbed stinger. They live in large colonies of over 50,000 bees. They keep their hives extremely tidy. Honey bees swarm. About sixty percent of the worker bees leave the original hive with the old queen to find a good location to build a new hive.
During the winter honey bees will hibernate and feed on the honey they have collected during the summer months. They cluster around the queen inside the hive to keep warm, ensuring the temperature stays around 34˚C.

• Bumblebees
Bumblebees live in small colonies of up to 400 bees. They only produce a small amount of honey for their needs. They do not make enough for beekeepers to harvest. They keep their honey in tiny wax cups, which are strewn in a disorderly fashion around their very untidy nests.
Male bumblebees do not have a stinger. Female bumblebees can sting more than once as their stinger is smooth, not barbed like the honey bee. However, they do not usually live the whole year, so the bumblebee queen will hibernate alone over the winter.

Both Honey bees and bumblebees are in decline. This is very serious as bees are the main pollinators of not only wild flowers but also crops, so play a key role in our food production. The cause of this decline is the loss of habitat and also Varroa Destructor mite, which kills the bees and spreads diseases to their larvae. However, increased use of pesticides may destroy the mite but kills the bees as well. In fact, the Varroa Destructor mite has become immune to many of the pesticides used.
We can help the bees by growing more wild flowers for them to pollinate, providing nest sites for bees and avoiding the use of chemical pesticides. Together we can make a difference.

Beetles

Anatomy

Beetles are the largest group of living organisms worldwide. They have lived for over 270 million years. They have a head, thorax, abdomen and six legs. They also have a thick, shiny shell that protects them from predators and harsh elements. Adults have two sets of wings. The hard shell splits down the middle and opens out to form the beetle’s forewings. These forewings protect the inner set of wings, which are more delicate in comparison.

Beetles cannot see well, so they use smells, sounds and vibrations to communicate. Most beetles have developed methods to defend themselves, such as camouflage, toxic properties and fighting defences.

Weevils are a type of beetle. They have tiny mouthparts on the tip of a long beak.

Habitat

Beetles have been found on land and in freshwater. They can live on beaches and in deserts, forests, grasslands and mountain regions. They are able to adapt to harsh conditions. However, no beetles have been found in the polar ice caps or in saltwater.

Diet

Beetles mainly eat animal and plant debris. Some of the bigger species will eat small birds and mammals. However, many species of beetle are regarded as pests due to what they eat. Bark beetles and Mountain Pine beetles enjoy burrowing into trees to feed on the wood dust. They are responsible for killing millions of trees each year worldwide. The Khapra beetle eats grain and can devastate a farmer’s stored crops.

Beetles chew their food before swallowing.

Lifecycle

Female beetles lay hundreds of eggs. These eggs hatch into larvae that look like tiny maggots, called grubs. Beetles have a pupa state before turning into adults. Most beetles only live for a year.

Behaviour

Many beetles, such as cicadas, crickets and grasshoppers are very noisy. The cicadas make their sound by vibrating a drum-like organ inside their abdomens, called the tymbal. Grasshoppers rub their legs on their wings to make a sound. Male and female Bark beetles chirp. The Deathwatch beetle makes a loud knocking sound by banging their heads on the walls of wooden tunnels. Darkling beetles tap their abdomens on the ground. A June beetle will squeal if you pick it up.

Fireflies are beetles and they glow in the dark. They have a light organ on their abdomen. Tropical click beetles have a pair of oval light organs on the thorax and a third on the abdomen.

Different species

There are over 350, 000 species of beetles with more being discovered yearly.

Beetles vary in size. The Fringed Ant beetle is the smallest beetle. It is 0.25mm long. The Titan beetle from South America is the largest beetle. It grows 20cm long. The Goliath beetle is the heaviest beetle weighing 100 grams. Beetles are a wide variety of colours and can have stripes and spots.

Some of the most common beetles are:

• Dung beetle

The Dung beetle eats the droppings of other animals which helps break it down as fertilisers for the soil. However, they are very particular about which dung they will eat. Different varieties of Dung beetle will eat different animal’s dung. They also prefer their dung fresh. Dung beetles use the stars to help them navigate and on cloudy days will easily get lost. If walking across hot ground the Dung beetle will stand on their ball of dung to keep their feet cool. They are able to push fifty times their own body weight. The Scarab beetle is a variety of Dung beetle and was a popular sacred symbol in ancient Egypt.

• Stag beetle

They get their name from their jaws, which resemble a stag’s antlers. However, they do not use their jaws to catch prey as they eat sap. Male stag beetles use their antlers to wrestle other males during the mating season. They are able to fly but usually only fly during the mating season. Stag beetles are nocturnal. They have a long lifecycle lasting up to seven years from egg to adult. But the adults only live a few weeks and are unlikely to survive a winter.

• Click beetle

These grow about 13mm long and will eat a mixture of small insects and plant roots. There are over 7000 different varieties of click beetle. However, all of them will drop to the ground as a means of defence. If they land on their back they make a sharp clicking sound using their abdomen to flip themselves up the right way again.

Butterflies, Moths and Caterpillars

Anatomy
The bodies of butterflies, moths and caterpillars are split into three parts, the head, thorax and the abdomen. They are all insects because they all have six legs. Yes! Even caterpillars! The other legs on a caterpillar are actually false legs, known as prolegs. These help the caterpillar climb and hold onto surfaces.
Butterflies and moths have four wings. These wings are transparent. The colours on the wings are tiny scales, which will fall off with age or can be easily brushed off by human fingers. Butterflies and moths hear through their wings.
They both have a special straw-like tube, which they uncurl to eat, called a proboscis. They taste things with their feet. They also have an organ called the Johnston’s organ at the base of their antennae, which helps maintain their sense of balance and orientation, especially whilst flying.
Butterflies have thin antennae with a knobbed tip. The tip of a moth’s antennae is straight not knobbed. A moth’s antennae can vary from threadlike, to feathery, or even hairy. Butterflies and moths use their antennae to smell.
Butterflies and moths are short-sighted. They have both compound and simple eyes. Their compound eyes are made of lots of hexagonal lenses, which focus light from their field of view to their optic nerve. The optic nerve carries the light information to their brain. They are unable to see further than about three and a half meters but, they are excellent at discriminating colours and can see ultraviolet light, which is invisible to the human eye. They use ultraviolet light for finding a mate and seeking nectar.
Caterpillars do not have bones. They have over a thousand muscles which help them to move. They have twelve eyes called ocelli, which are unable to identify images but can differentiate between light intensity. They breathe through tiny holes along their abdomen, called spiracles not through their mouths.

Habitat
Caterpillars and moths can be found in a wide variety of habitats worldwide. Some species, such as the Woolly Bear moth can be found in the Arctic. The Woolly Bear moth caterpillar takes nearly seven years to become an adult.
In comparison, butterflies can not survive such cold climates. They can be found in farmlands, forests, gardens, marshes, meadows, rivers, swamps and tropical areas with lots of plant life. When it rains butterflies will find shelter in tree cavities and dense undergrowth.
A group of butterflies is called a flutter.

Diet
Butterflies like to sip nectar from any pollinating flowers and juice from rotting fruits. They also drink water. Male butterflies will drink from muddy puddles to get extra nutrients and minerals needed for mating. Different species of butterfly prefer different types of plants. For example, Black Swallowtail butterflies enjoy carrot, dill, fennel and parsley, Tiger Swallowtail butterflies eat black cherry tree leaves and Monarch butterflies only eat milkweed plants.
Moths prefer to feed from fragrant, white flowers like those of the yucca plant. The hummingbird moth, which has migrated from Africa to many European countries including the UK, will hover in front of a flower and uncurl their proboscis in flight to sip nectar from plants, such as the honeysuckle. Some night-blooming flowers are dependent on moths for pollination.
A caterpillar’s first meal is usually its own egg shell, which is rich in protein. They will spend most of their time eating. Caterpillars are mostly herbivores, eating plants and leaves. Some species, such as the caterpillar of the Cinnabar moth will eat other caterpillars. Others like the caterpillar of the Clothes moth will eat through all types of fabric.
The Lunar moth and the Atlas moth have no mouths so never eat and drink. They live off the energy they stored up as caterpillars.

Lifecycle
There are four stages in the life cycle of the butterfly and the moth:
• Egg – the butterfly and moth lay their eggs on vegetation that will be a suitable food source when they hatch.
• Larva – caterpillars hatch from the eggs and, as soon as they are born, they eat. They shed their skins as they grow bigger. Every time a caterpillar sheds, it sucks in air to enlarge their new exoskeleton before it goes hard. They continue to eat until they have stored enough energy to change.
• Pupa – when the caterpillars have grown large enough it turns into a pupa. The Sphinx moth will pupate underground. A butterfly’s pupa shell is hard and smooth as it is formed from its last caterpillar skin. It is called a chrysalis. A moth’s pupa shell is soft as they spin it out of silk. It is called a cocoon. Inside both, many changes are taking place – antennae grow, wings are formed, mouthparts are transformed. The process is called metamorphosis.
• Adult – when they emerge from the pupa they are unable to fly until their wings have dried and hardened. On average they live about two to four weeks as adults. In this time they eat, mate and lay eggs ready for the cycle to begin again. A male can smell a female from over seven miles away. In colder climates some moths have a two year lifecycle. How long a butterfly or moth can live during its entire life cycle is dependent upon its species.

Behaviour
Butterflies and moths exhibit some different behaviour patterns.

• Butterflies 
Butterflies are only active during the day because they can only feed or fly when their body temperature is at least 30˚C. The butterfly’s’ wings act as mini solar panels. They spread their wings to absorb heat. The tiny veins in their wings carry this heat to their body.
Dark colours absorb more heat. When they do not need to harness the sun’s energy they hold their wings vertically up over their backs. The wings of the Holly Blue butterfly are shiny underneath to reflect heat so they do not get too hot. The lighter coloured butterflies like the Cabbage White also reflect the sun’s rays.

• Moths
Moths do not use their wings in the same way as butterflies to maintain their body temperature. They have plumper and hairier bodies to keep them warm. Unlike butterflies, moths have a fraenulum, which join the forewing to the hind wing. When they fly their wings beat in unison. They heat up their flight muscles by vibrating their wings using their fraenulum. Moths do not have as colourful wings as butterflies and will use their wings to hide their abdomens.
They are active at different times of night depending on their species. They navigate using the moon and the stars. On cloudy evenings they use geomagnetic clues. Moths are often drawn to artificial light sources mistaking it as the moon. The reason they stop when they get close to the bright light, is because the artificial moon becomes the sun, so the moths settle down for their daytime sleep.

Different species
Butterflies and moths come in lots of different shapes and sizes, from as tiny as a pinhead to as large as an adult’s hand. There are over 140,000 species of moths worldwide, whereas there are only 24,000 species of butterfly. Both start as caterpillars. Butterflies, moths and caterpillars have developed different ways of protecting themselves.
Some butterflies and caterpillars, such as the Monarch and the British Swallowtail, use vibrant colours to deter predators. Bright colours usually signal the creature is poisonous or tastes disgusting so other animals stay away. Other butterflies use their wings to mimic more fearsome creatures. For example, the eyespot design on the topside of the Peacock butterfly’s wings can scare large birds, whilst the dark colours underneath the Peacock butterfly’s wings act as camouflage when it holds its wings upright. The Peacock butterfly can also produce a loud grating noise to scare predators by moving its forewings.
Many moths use camouflage colours to blend into their environment and hide from predators. For example, the various species of Hawk moths can look like leaves and the Buff-tip moth looks like a part of a branch. One of the most colourful moths is the Garden Tiger moth. It has chocolate brown with a cream net-pattern on its forewings, and orange hind wings with dark blue spots.
The Lackey moth caterpillar’s bright stripes and hairiness are a warning to birds that they taste horrid, but cuckoos don’t seem to mind and eat them anyway. The most dangerous caterpillar in the UK is the Puss moth caterpillar. It is green with colourful face-like markings on its head and a dark foreboding spike on the tip of its abdomen. When threatened the Puss moth caterpillar sprays formic acid at it’s attacker to prevent itself being eaten.
The Painted Lady butterfly is the most common butterfly in the world.