Flying ant season is here!

So what do the experts advise you should do?

“As long as it is not inside your home, I would say just leave them alone and let them get on with it, or watch what’s happening because it’s fascinating,” said Professor Adria LeBoeuf of the University of Cambridge.

“The only thing is you probably want to shut your doors and windows because ants can be difficult to get rid of once they settle into in your house. These queens can live up to 30 years and they produce hundreds of thousands of workers in a lifetime!

“The queens of the black garden ant flew a little late this year due to the cold snap we’ve had the last few weeks. Normally they would fly on a hotter day, but it seems they were impatient!”

Professor LeBoeuf's research focuses on how evolution has engineered social life. She and her team have long studied ants and one particular aspect of their behaviour: social fluid exchange – a means by which they can share metabolic work across the colony.

Professor LeBoeuf's team at the Laboratory of Social Fluids, part of the Department of Zoology, is looking at how, in species that engage in this behaviour, every individual in the colony is connected through a network of fluid exchange. The exchanged fluid is full of growth proteins, hormones, Ribonucleic acid (RNA) and small molecules.

“All of this social transmission may hold the key to the exceptional difference in longevity between queens and workers,” said Professor LeBoeuf.

Some of these components, when fed to larvae mouth-to-mouth, can influence their development. This provides a means for how social insect communities can collectively decide on the colony’s developmental progression by transmitted cues and signals over the social circulatory system.

To find out more about Professor LeBoeuf’s work on ants and social fluids see the Laboratory of Social Fluids website.