ANIMAL COMMUNITIES AND SOCIAL LIFE 155 
they fall exhausted and dying in the performance of their 
duties. The community, it is important to note, is a per- 
sistent or continuous one. The workers do not live long, 
the spring broods usually not over two or three months, 
and the fall broods not more than six or eight months; 
but new ones are hatching while the old ones are dying, 
and the community as a whole always persists. The queen 
may live several years, perhaps as many as five.* She lays 
about one million eggs a year. 
85. The ants—There are many species of ants, two 
thousand or more, and all of them live in communities and 
show a truly communal life. There is much variety of 
habit in the lives of different kinds of ants, and the degree 
in which the communal or social life is specialized or elab- 
orated varies much. But certain general conditions pre- 
vail in the life of all the different kinds of individuals— 
Fig. 92.—Female (a), male (0), and worker (c) of an ant (Camponotus sp.). 
sexually developed males and females that possess wings, 
and sexually undeveloped workers that are wingless (Fig. 
92). In some kinds the workers show structural differ- 
* A queen bee has been kept «live for fifteen years, 
