Camponotus nearcticus facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Camponotus nearcticus |
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C. nearcticus
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| Camponotus nearcticus Emery, 1893
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The smaller carpenter ant (scientific name: Camponotus nearcticus) is a tiny carpenter ant. It looks a bit like the black garden ant (Lasius niger). Sometimes, these ants can become a bit of a bother in homes.
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What Does the Smaller Carpenter Ant Look Like?
These ants are quite small! Worker ants are usually about 3.5 to 7.5 mm (0.14 to 0.30 in) long. The queen ant, who is bigger, can be 4 to 10 millimetres (0.16 to 0.39 in) long.
How to Identify Them?
You can often tell these ants apart by their color. They are a solid dark brown or black. Also, they have only a few standing-up hairs on their cheeks and on a part of their head called the clypeal disc.
Where Do Smaller Carpenter Ants Live?
You can find Camponotus nearcticus ants across the United States and Canada. They live in places like Ontario in Canada. In the U.S., they are found from North Dakota all the way south to Colorado and Florida.
Preferred Homes for These Ants
These ants love to live in prairies and woodlands. This includes forests with deciduous trees (trees that lose their leaves), oak trees, and pine forests.
They often build their nests in:
- Dead twigs
- Branches
- Logs
- Loose bark from trees
- Pine cones
- Wooden parts of buildings, especially around rooftops
Ant Colony Size
Smaller carpenter ant nests are usually quite small. They often have only a few hundred ants. However, one large nest that scientists studied had 531 ants, not counting the young ants or the ants that could reproduce. You can usually see ants that can reproduce in nests from March to October.
Sometimes, these ants can become a minor pest if they build their nests inside wooden parts of houses.
