Under normal circumstances, a colony would be the place where the ant population lives, the number of queens just has to be equal or greater than 1, as they can have multiple in a single place.
This supercolony is, from what I understood, a huge quantity of colonies that are interconnected, so you could trek from Portugal to Italy entirely within its tunnels, kinda like a state or country connected by roads
I got distracted and forgot to look it up…thanks ADHD…
In 2000, an enormous supercolony of Argentine ants was found in Southern Europe (report published in 2002).[15] Of 33 ant populations tested along the 6,004-kilometre (3,731 mi) stretch along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts in Southern Europe, 30 belonged to one supercolony with estimated millions of nests and billions of workers, interspersed with three populations of another supercolony.
Isn’t there one giant ant colony that’s essentially the same colony spread over several us states?
I’ll have to look it up and get back to this with answers.
There’s one, I think in Brazil, as big as the UK
Welp, talk about learning something completely unexpected
https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/insects-invertebrates/largest-ant-colony
That’s crazy! How is a colony defined, is it one queen is managing the whole 6000km territory?
Under normal circumstances, a colony would be the place where the ant population lives, the number of queens just has to be equal or greater than 1, as they can have multiple in a single place.
This supercolony is, from what I understood, a huge quantity of colonies that are interconnected, so you could trek from Portugal to Italy entirely within its tunnels, kinda like a state or country connected by roads
I got distracted and forgot to look it up…thanks ADHD…
In 2000, an enormous supercolony of Argentine ants was found in Southern Europe (report published in 2002).[15] Of 33 ant populations tested along the 6,004-kilometre (3,731 mi) stretch along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts in Southern Europe, 30 belonged to one supercolony with estimated millions of nests and billions of workers, interspersed with three populations of another supercolony.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony
Blurb is under the “super colony” subsection.