Ant colony

[2] In order to establish new colonies, ants undertake flights that occur at species-characteristic times of the day.

[6] The term "ant colony" refers to a population of workers, reproductive individuals, and brood that live together, cooperate, and treat one another non-aggressively.

[6] The name "anthill" (or "ant hill") applies to aboveground nests where the workers pile sand or soil outside the entrance, forming a large mound.

[11][6] Colonies have a significant range of sizes: some are just several[clarification needed] ants living in a twig, while others are super-colonies with many millions of workers.

[15] In 2009, it was demonstrated that the largest Japanese, Californian and European Argentine ant supercolonies were in fact part of a single global "megacolony".

[citation needed] Another supercolony, measuring approximately 100 km (62 mi) wide, was found beneath Melbourne, Australia in 2004.

It involves pouring molten metal (typically non-toxic zinc or aluminum), plaster or cement down an ant colony mound acting as a mold and upon hardening, one excavates the resulting structure.

Walter R. Tschinkel notes in Ant Architecture: The Wonder, Beauty, and Science of Underground Nests that many commercial operations seem to use a casting procedure he developed and published based on the work of Brazilian myrmecologists Meinhard Jacoby and Luiz Forti.

[citation needed] An ant-bed, in its simplest form, is a pile of soil, sand, pine needles, manure, urine, or clay or a composite of these and other materials that build up at the entrances of the subterranean dwellings of ant colonies as they are excavated.

[23] They normally deposit the dirt or vegetation at the top of the hill to prevent it from sliding back into the colony, but in some species, they actively sculpt the materials into specific shapes and may create nest chambers within the mound.