You Can Name this Ant!

Help School of Ants choose an official common name for Forelius pruinosus!

One of our most common ant species has no common name. You put your collective, creative minds together and gave us an amazing list of common names for our dear Forelius pruinosus. Now we’ve narrowed the list down to four names, and we’re putting them up for one final vote. The winning name will be submitted to the Entomological Society of America to be F. pruinosus‘ official common name!

Note that you can only submit one vote per IP address so vote with care!

Meet the four finalists:

Barricade Ant – Forelius pruinosus use chemical defenses and elaborate teamwork to barricade the colony openings of ants four times larger than themselves during foraging.



Blockade Ant – F. pruinosus does not allow other ants to leave their nests if they’ve found something delicious nearby; they surround their competitors’ nest and shoot chemicals out of their butts!



High-Noon Ant – F. pruinosus have been described as thermophilic, or heat-loving, and are typically the only ants actively foraging at noon when the sun is at its highest. This is one of the best ways for ant scientists to collect them – go out at the hottest part of the day and you’ll even be likely to find a F. pruinosus!

Highway Ant – F. pruinosus forms thick trails as they forage during the day, they form wide ant highways as they travel from a food source back to their nest.

Winning name

After the Forelius pruinosus vote is complete, we’ll announce the winning name in a blog post right here on Your Wild Life. We’ll keep you posted on our progress when we officially submit the name to the Entomological Society of America.