Male Ants vs. Female Ants: 5 Key Differences and Roles

Society. When you think of that word, you probably think about the world of people. Yet any species can have a society, from the largest to the smallest. Ants (or Formicidae), though tiny, hardy, industrious creatures, have one of the most fascinating societies in the animal kingdom. Every ant colony has a queen, and the roles of males and females within ant society — which comprises over 10,000 different species — are intriguing and distinct. Let’s explore the 5 key differences and roles between male and female ants.

Male Ant vs. Female Ant: Roles

The vast majority of ants born are females. All worker ants — the ones you see marching around in lines, collecting food, or even digging the tunnels in your ant farm — are females, too. Whether the job is to protect the queen, find food, police the other ants, or remove waste from the colony, it’s an all-female workforce. And these workers will never have offspring.

Yet one female ant also sits at the top of every colony: the queen. This particular individual is usually the female ant larva in a given generation who was able to eat the most protein while growing to adulthood. This makes her the largest, strongest, and most fertile, and thus every ant society organizes itself around feeding and protecting its queen, ensuring the success of the next generation. Once a queen has produced a mature ant colony (mostly consisting of infertile individuals), she will give birth to a generation of ants who have the ability to reproduce. These ants will spread to new areas, creating new colonies of their own.

Male Ant vs. Female Ant: Numbers

There are many generations when no male ants (also known as drones) are born at all. In fact, male ants serve a pretty limited purpose in the majority-female ant world: just one male ant is occasionally needed to fertilize a queen’s eggs. Once or twice a year, the queen gives birth to thousands of male ants at a time. All will compete to fertilize the queen; only one will succeed. And soon after this has happened, the male ants — who have a much shorter lifespan than their female counterparts — will die.

As a result, the average ant you encounter is probably thousands of times more likely to be female than male. Typically, a queen’s genes can “decide” whether her next brood will be all-female or all-male. The necessity of a male brood is far lower: while the colony constantly needs workers, it requires new male genetic material much more rarely.

Male Ant vs. Female Ant: Shape

Continuing to keep in mind that male ants are extremely rare compared with the incidence of females, we can nonetheless compare their shape and size. Females themselves range greatly in size, the smallest “bureaucrats” being known as minor workers. Major workers, by contrast, can be double the size of a minor worker, with proportionally larger heads and, in some cases, powerful mandibles (ant teeth) for defense. Soldier ants fall into this category.

The queen will be the largest ant in the colony. This is because of her large stomach, an important part of her reproduction, and the muscles required to power her wings. (Even so, her wings will be torn off after mating!)

A male ant will look much like a slightly smaller queen: he also has wings and is larger than minor or major worker ants. Males also have smaller heads, bigger eyes, and straighter antennae than queens do.

Male Ant vs. Female Ant: Fertility

All male ants are capable of reproduction, even though just one male per generation will be successful in fertilizing a queen’s egg. The male ant plays no other role in ant society but to be born, attempt to reproduce, and die. Conversely, female ants’ fertility is determined at the larval stage. Those females that are able to consume an excess of protein will become fertile and thus candidates to become queens and start their own colonies. But the vast majority of female ants are born without reproductive ability — and many that can reproduce never will.

The reproduction itself is a spectacular phenomenon: in warm, damp weather following a rain, the winged ants (either potential queens or males of the species) fly from their colonies and try to meet up. In places such as Europe, this occurrence even has a name: Flying Ant Day. In many ant species, the males and females meet, and mate, high in the air. When mating is complete, the impregnated queens will fall back to earth, shed their wings, and dig a nest in the sodden earth. The males simply die off.

The expectant mothers do not eat for several weeks, instead feeding their larval brood from their fat deposits and their no-longer-needed wing muscles. They lay their eggs — hundreds or even thousands of them — then use the sperm collected from the males to fertilize them.

Mating is a one-time act amidst ants: the female can store and use sperm from a male that has been dead for years.

Male Ant vs. Female Ant: Length of Life

Male ants live only about a week, existing purely to provide sperm for the reproduction process. Most workers (all female, remember) live for about a year. Yet amazingly, a queen can live, and continue to produce eggs, for almost 30 years.