Ant ID's

[sebastianbawn]

Sorry no pics as I forgot to take my camera to work today but here goes. Our yard is adjacent to a train track in Winterbourne, Bristol. I found one colony of ants, orange in colour and approx 3mm long. The second colony were black ants taht had the shape of I think it is the Myrmica species and were pure black, a little lighter on the abdomen and approx 6-7mm in length. Sorry but thats all the info I have, I will try to get pics over the next few days

[Matt Smith]

Even with good photos it is almost impossible to separate many ants to species, most of them need to go under the microscope to get a defineate ID as the differences between species can be very subtle.