What are the common types of social insects?
Social insects are insects that live in colonies with coordinated colony life and marked internal differentiation. Their greatest characteristic is that members establish a division of labor based on a hierarchy of differentiation, and individual members find it difficult to survive once they leave the colony. Common social insects include bees, termites, ants, wasps, and others. Let's take a look below!
Ants
Ants are typical social insects and generally have two castes, the queen and workers. At specific times, unfertilized female ants and male ants appear, and in some species the workers' heads become specialized and enlarged, turning into soldier ants. The queen, also called the mother ant or ant king, has the main duties of laying eggs, reproducing offspring, and overseeing the entire colony family. Workers have no reproductive ability, and their main duties are building and expanding the nest, collecting food, and feeding larvae and the queen. Soldier ants is the common name for the large workers of certain ant species; they have well-developed mandibles that can crush hard food and serve as weapons in battle when defending the colony.
Bees
Bees live in colonies. A bee colony has three types: the queen bee, worker bees, and drones, with one queen, 10,000 to 150,000 workers, and 500 to 1,500 drones. The queen is larger in size and specializes in laying eggs and reproduction. Drones are smaller than females and specialize in mating, dying shortly after mating. Worker bees are smaller in size and are female bees with underdeveloped reproductive organs, specializing in building the nest, collecting food, rearing larvae, cleaning the hive cells, and regulating hive humidity.
Termites
Termites are social insects, and their social castes are the queen, king, soldiers, and workers. The queen specializes in laying eggs and reproduction, the king specializes in mating, the soldiers are the defenders of the colony, and the workers handle many miscellaneous tasks within the nest, such as building termite mounds, digging tunnels, constructing termite roads, cultivating fungus gardens, collecting food, rearing young termites, soldiers, and the queen, cleaning, and tending the eggs. In species without soldiers, they are also responsible for resisting outside enemies.
Wasps
Wasps, also known as hornets, yellow jackets, and paper wasps, are a group of insects with social behavior. In a wasp colony there are differences among the queen, workers, and drones. The queen is a fertilized female that mated with a drone after autumn the previous year and stores sperm in a spermatheca for use in batches. Drones die shortly after mating, and workers are responsible for building the nest and rearing larvae.