male

Wood ant nest.  This nest belongs to the Southern red wood ant, Formica rufa.  Wood ant nests do differ between species, although it can be hard to tell them apart.

Nest and budded smaller nest of wood ant.  This budding often happens with wood ant species.

Social parasitism in ants. The queen of the Slave maker ant, Formica sanguinea, being tended to by workers of Dusky ant Formica fusca.

Worker ant F. aquilonia Scottish wood ant, in profile.  Workers are all haplodiploid, sharing much of their genetic material with their mother, the queen. This supports their eusocial colonies.

Male wood ant F. lugubris Hairy wood ant.  These males have dark bodies and yellow legs and genitals.  Like the females, they have wings.  Unlike the females, shortly after mating during the nuptial flight, they will die.

Queen ant F. aquilonia Scottish wood ant with wings.  Newly emerged queens have wings, and following their mating and nuptial flight, they bite these off.  This enables them to burrow underground and set up a new ant nest and colony, and to begin laying eggs and raising young.

Pupae of a wood ant, both within its cocoon, and extracted.  Detail from a life cycle ant illustration by Lizzie Harper natural history and sciart illustrator

Larvae of wood ant showing their translucent bodies and segmentation.

Illustration of several eggs of a wood ant.

Large landscape showing an idealised view of Bantham estate in Devon.  It explains the process of succession and stabilization in a sand dunes landscape.  Over 28 species of plant and 17 animals appear in this natural history illustration.  These include adders to sand wasps, Comma butterflies to linnets, and marram grass to Sea carrots. Species […]

House sparrow Passer domesticus male perching on a branch with rosehips.

Male bullfinch in breeding plumage on flowering cherry

Samon Salmo salar hen, cock, parr, and smolt stages with text

Great Tit Parus major on a tree branch with grasses behind