Solenopsis invicta 

The life cycle of a fire ant consists of 4 stages. First the queen lays the egg. A young queen will lay up to 20 eggs while an older mature queen can lay as many as 5000 eggs per day. These eggs will hatch a around a week later in larvae. The unfertilized eggs will develop into winged males while the fertilized become female. Most females become sterile worker ants but a few of the larvae are fed more food and develop into winger reproductive alates. After about another week has passed larvae become pupae. In this stage they do not eat and spend all there time and energy transforming into adults. After a few days being pupae, they become adults where they will take on their respected role in the colony. (NFAEP 2022). 

Adult fire ants will look like your typical ant consisting of a head, thorax and abdomen and about 3 mm in length. Their heads have big pinchers use to grab and carry things along with big antennae for smell. The thorax consists of 3 pairs of legs typical for insects. And the abdomen has a stinger that releases venom used for hunting and defense. (Anon 2021). Fire ants like warm, dry or tropical environments, as of now these are the only areas of the United States that they inhabit. 

Fire ant colonies are fascinating because they are some of the best at working together to solve problems. This has inspired mathematicians to study the idea of swarm intelligence or swarm theory. They are incredible at working together to survive, and because of this are very hard to get rid of. Sense fire ants are an invasive species to North America it is important to monitor the population and try to control it as much as possible. They feed on seeds and larvae of a lot of native species, eliminating them or displacing them possibly causing massive ecosystem change over time.