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iNat·1269340SuperfamilyInsecta2,265,490 field observations
  1. Animals
  2. ›Arthropods
  3. ›Hexapods
  4. ›Insects
  5. ›Winged and Once-winged Insects
  6. ›Ants, Bees, Wasps, and Sawflies
  7. ›Narrow-waisted Wasps, Ants, and Bees
  8. ›Ants, Bees, and Stinging Wasps
Formicoidea
Plate 1 of 5. (c) Reiner Richter, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), uploaded by Reiner Richter · via iNaturalist

Formicoidea

Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants appear in the fossil record across the globe in considerable diversity during the latest Early Cretaceous and early Late Cretaceous, suggesting an earlier origin. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period, and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been...

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This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 1269340.